Paddington essay

For, although he sets his Paddington stories in a safe middle-class house in West London, Paddington himself comes from elsewhere, somewhere so far-flung to be the other side of the world – “Darkest Peru”. As a stowaway Paddington travelled illegally by boat and was taken in by comfortably off London family.

But the bear’s famous label is also very important, signalling his role as a figure for a series of memories about the trauma of World War II. Bond recalled watching images of evacuee and refugee children wearing labels at train stations. Living in Reading during the war, I can remember train-loads of refugees coming down from London.

At the time of writing the first Paddington book in 1962, Bond lived in a flat on Portobello Road with his first wife, not in the large middle-class house with housekeeper that he imagined for the book.

Michael Bond, author of the Paddington Bear stories, after he was awarded a CBE in 2015. Nick Ansell/PA Archive/PA Images