The Man who drew Pooh and Toad is the title of a gently enchanting exhibition of drawings by E.H.Shepard, at the Henley River and Rowing Museum, which can be seen until February 4. And indeed that is how he's remembered - through the childhood treasures of A.A.Milne and Kenneth Grahame before the days of Lyra and Harry Potter, though this show also allows a much fuller picture of his achievement.

Shepard's indefatigable output continued till his death in 1976, aged 96. We see him at his desk in 1970, dapper in suit and tie, with paintpots and pencils but no electronics, an old-school English gentleman; and a self-portrait in 1916 (he fought on the Somme, at Arras and Ypres), with a cartoon of dauntless Tommies in Flanders mud, drawn for Punch where he had a long connection.

He drew from early days. His juvenilia include an imaginary drawing on the back of his Latin prep in 1893 when he was 14, of the wedding of the (later) King George V. His adult work includes almost a complete galaxy of books and authors very famous in their day - John Drinkwater, Laurence Housman, E.V.Lucas, Eleanor Farjeon, Jan Struther. Like Tolkien, too, he produced charming Christmas cards for his friends.

But back to Pooh and Toad - Milne from 1924, Grahame from 1930. Both of them guided and admired his evocations of their creations. Milne showed him the original locations of the stories, while Pooh was Shepard's own bear handed down to his son and grand-daughter and a casualty of the Second World War.

Of The Wind in the Willows, Grahame told him: "I love these little people; be kind to them." And he was. In these often quite tiny drawings, more than 70 of which are on show, from every period of his life, we can see a quizzical, observant, always affectionate eye on the two- and four- legged inhabitants of the world - never exotic, never far from the Home Counties, cosy perhaps but not snobbish. Anthropomorphic, certainly; it's that perky upturned snout of Mole, Rat, Badger that gives them their endearing quality, and Christopher Robin's stance, hands on hips and legs firmly planted saves him from mawkishness. No wonder that one of Shepard's books is called The Enchanted Place. That basic contrast between imagination and reality lies at the heart of his work.