“So Paddington, in a sense, was a refugee, and I do think that there’s no sadder sight than refugees.”īut A Bear Called Paddington, and the many books that follow it, tell a happy story of a fluffy brown bear who is embraced in his new home. “They all had a label round their neck with their name and address on and a little case or package containing all their treasured possessions,” Bond recalled during his interview with Pauli. Thank you.” Bond based the character, in part, on British children who were evacuated from the country during WWII to save them from German bombings. In 1958, Bond published A Bear Called Paddington. The story followed the adventures of the titular character, who arrives at London’s Paddington railway station from “darkest Peru.” He carries a suitcase and a tag that instructs, “Please look after this bear. “He called it Paddington because they were living near Paddington Station at the time,” the BBC writes. On Christmas Eve of 1956, he spotted a teddy bear sitting in a shop window, and bought the toy as a stocking filler for his wife. But the idea for Paddington Bear came a decade later. In 1943, he enlisted in the Royal Air Force and later transferred to the army.īond wrote his first short story while stationed in Egypt. Bond was in the building when it was hit by a German bomb during World War II, but he miraculously emerged unscathed.
One of his first jobs was working for a BBC transmitter facility in Reading. Unable to tolerate the abuse, Bond left school at the age of 14. In 2014, he told Michelle Pauli of The Guardianthat he “never went to bed without a story.” But Bond’s strict Catholic school, where teachers disciplined pupils with rubber straps, cast a pallor over his childhood.
“Michael was a giant of children’s literature,” the post states, adding that Bond passed away of an unspecified illness.īorn in 1926 in the English town of Newbury, Bond grew up in a happy home, supported by loving parents. HarperCollins, Bond’s longtime publisher, announced the author’s death in a Facebook post. On Tuesday, the BBC reports, the author died at the age of 91. Michael Bond created one of the Britain’s most beloved children’s literary characters: a sweet little bear named Paddington, who “tries so hard to get things right” despite his uncanny knack for getting into sticky situations.
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