Michael Bond, the British author who created Paddington Bear, the polite, good-natured but disaster-prone little hero of children’s novels, died recently at his home in London. He was 91 years old.
Bond started his career as a cinematographer for the BBC. He wrote around 20 stories about the adventures of Paddington Bear between 1958 and 1979, which were translated into more than 30 languages, selling more than 30 million copies. Bond lived in the Maida Vale section of London, not far from Paddington Station.
With time, ‘The Adventures of Paddington’ has become a children’s classic and has been adapted into numerous TV series and animated films. He has become a symbol of the London train station, which now proudly displays a bronze statue of everyone’s favourite fictional bear.