PAWS FOR THOUGHT

An orphan arrives from Darkest Peru with just the bear necessities, wins over hearts and minds, and then crowns 64 years of success by taking tea with the Queen. So what is the secret of Paddington’s perennial appeal?

WORDS ROSE SHEPHERD

On Christmas Eve 1956, with snow falling, a young BBC cameraman named Michael Bond entered the marble halls of a splendid Edwardian Beaux-Arts department store on London’s Oxford Street and headed for the toy department.

This was Selfridges, always spellbinding at Christmas, but what happened that day had a very special magic. Alone on a shelf sat a teddy bear, looking “rather forlorn”, Bond would later recall. Feeling sorry for it, he bought it as a gift for his wife, Brenda. “Had there been two bears I might have given them a passing glance, but I could hardly ignore one bear all by itself, with Christmas coming on.”

If Michael and Brenda sat down the following day to listen to the young Queen Elizabeth II’s Christmas message, broadcast from the study at Sandringham, they would have heard her plea on behalf of people driven from their homes by war or violence. “We call them ‘refugees’; let us give them a true refuge; let us see that for them and their children there is room at the inn.”

As a teenager growing up in Reading, Michael had stood on the station as trains clattered through, bound for the West Country, bearing child evacuees from the Blitz. He had watched harrowing newsreels of Jewish child refugees, rescued by the Kindertransport, each clutching “a little case or package containing all their treasured possessions”, and each with a label round their neck. “There’s no sadder sight than refugees,” he once said.

His day job with the BBC kept aspiring writer Michael busy, but he had had a little publishing success with his short stories and was sitting at his typewriter on ten days’ leave, a blank sheet of paper before him, as he cast around for inspiration. In an instant he caught the glassy eye of the teddy bear, who was giving him a “hard stare” from the mantelpiece, and thought “What if…?” What if a real, live bear found himself on Paddington station? He would be a refugee from a far country, wearing a government surplus duffel coat and a bush hat. “Mr and Mrs Brown first met Paddington on a railway platform,” he jotted down – and, within those ten days, he had finished his first Paddington book, featuring one of the most beloved, enduring and empathetic characters in children’s literature. A Bear Called Paddington tells how the Browns came upon an orphaned bear from “Darkest Peru”, sitting on a suitcase, wearing a battered hat, a gift from his Uncle Pastuzo, with a label round his neck penned by his Aunt Lucy at her retirement home in Lima, ‘Please look after this bear. Thank you.’

“I came in a lifeboat and ate marmalade sandwiches. Bears like marmalade,” the bear confides to the Browns, who take him home to live with them at 32 Windsor Gardens, and, in a very British way, decide to call him Paddington because they simply cannot get their tongues around his Peruvian name.

Always polite, courtly of speech, if hapless, Paddington creates chaos around him, but, as children’s writer Michael Morpurgo wrote, “he’s not just a charming bear… he reflects the best of us… through his innocence and kindness he relates to everyone – adults as well as children”. He is also touchingly optimistic, “a hopeful bear at heart”.

Among a cast of other engaging characters, Samuel Gruber, an elderly Hungarian with an antique shop on Portobello Road, is Paddington’s friend and ally. He was apparently based on

Clockwise from far left: The first Paddington film was released in 2014, and was nominated for two BAFTAs; the Queen's afternoon tea with Paddington Bear was kept as a surprise for everyone, including her family; the first book, A Bear Called Paddington, was released in 1958; Michael Bond created his beloved character from a lonely-looking teddy bear he'd bought in Selfridges

Michael Bond’s literary agent, Harvey Unna, a German Jew who fled the Nazis, arriving in England with just a suitcase and £25. Michael had originally intended Paddington to have travelled from Africa, until Harvey pointed out that there are no bears – or barely a bear –there, so instead he became a Peruvian spectacled bear.

Paddington made his publishing debut in October 1958, earning Bond a princely £75 advance, and, in those less rapacious times, it would be 14 years before anyone thought to capitalise on his image. For Christmas 1972, Shirley and Eddie Clarkson designed a prototype soft toy and gave one each to their daughter, Joanna, and son Jeremy (the writer and broadcaster best known for presenting the BBC’s Top Gear).

The Wellington boots were the Clarksons’ innovation, allowing the bear to stand. Michael Bond granted them global licensing rights to manufacture Paddington toys, a holy grail.

Already published in Swedish, Danish, Dutch and Japanese, Paddington was set to take the world by storm. Today Paddington paraphernalia includes purses, pencil cases and pyjamas, coasters and colouring books, backpacks, T-shirts, jigsaws, skittles… There have been Paddington musicals, stage shows, ice shows, puppet shows and TV adaptations.

In 1985, Paddington was the subject of a Sunday Times Magazine “Life in the Day” column. A year later he joined Richard Branson in his attempt to beat the Atlantic Blue Riband speed record and attended the Conservative party conference with Margaret Thatcher. His official autobiography, The Life and Times of Paddington Bear, by Russell Ash and Michael Bond, was published in 1988.

In 2000 a lifesize bronze statue was unveiled on Paddington Station, which, on the death of Michael Bond in 2017, aged 91, became a shrine to the author, where Londoners left jars of marmalade and other touching tributes. Paddington is the face of Robertson’s Marmalade; he has appeared on a 50p coin and a postage stamp. More than 20 Paddington books have been published, in 30 different languages, including the Latin Ursus Nomine Paddington. The movie Paddington, released in 2014, was followed by Paddington 2, in 2017, when the Michael had intended Paddington original starry cast, which included Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville, to have travelled from Africa, but as Julie Walters, Sally Hawkins, Jim there are no bears there, he became Broadbent, Peter Capaldi and Imelda Staunton, were joined by Hugh Grant. a Peruvian spectacled bear Paddington 3 is expected to be released next year. On his passing, Michael Bond left us one last precious gift, Paddington’s Finest Hour, completed just before he died and published posthumously in 2018 on the 60th anniversary of A Bear Called Paddington. But a finer hour was yet to be. In June 2022, Paddington was honoured to join the Queen for afternoon tea at Buckingham Palace to celebrate her Platinum Jubilee. As delirious crowds on the Mall whooped and waved their flags, Paddington stood on his chair to deliver a message for all of us. “Happy Jubilee, Ma’am, and thank you… for everything.” “That’s very kind,” said Her Majesty, and here is the essence of the Paddington story, its perennial appeal, why it warms the hearts of young and old. Born of an impulse purchase, because a soft-hearted man felt sorry for a stuffed toy, it’s about kindness.

Clockwise from far left: A sculpture of the bear at Paddington Station; Chalcot Crescent in Primrose Hill was used as the street where the Brown family live in the films; a rare first edition of the novel shows Bond's annotations; Alice's Antiques Shop in Portobello plays a starring role in the second film; fans paid tribute to Bond on his death in 2017