Who is the author of paddington bear

Six weeks later, the family moved to Reading, where Norman Bond worked for the post office. Bond said Paddington Bear had partly been inspired by his memories of child evacuees passing through Reading from London. Bond sold his first short story in , to the magazine London Opinion, and said later that he had written it outside a tent in Cairo.

He did not limit his work to Paddington or to print, but animals did dominate his work. Bond also wrote books about Olga da Polga, a guinea pig, and a mouse called Thursday, and for adult readers he wrote of Monsieur Pamplemousse, a culinary detective with a dog named Pommes Frites. But he was always best known for Paddington, whose fame grew wildly in the s after the first stuffed animal version was produced and the first television series became a hit, on the BBC in Britain and later on various networks including PBS, Nickelodeon and HBO in the United States.

I thought about suicide. Bond credited the spirit of Paddington with helping him through difficult times.

Other series and television movies followed. A movie with live actors and a computer-animated bear, voiced by Ben Whishaw, was released in A sequel is expected this year. We have been overwhelmed by all your comments and messages. Bond married Brenda Mary Johnson in , and they separated in the s. He married Susan Marfrey Rogers in , the same year that his divorce became final.

She survives him, as do a daughter, Karen Jankel; a son, Anthony; and four grandchildren. Thank you. But 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. The stories inspired two TV series—one animated, the other made using stop-motion techniques—and two films, one of which will be released this year.

He also wrote a mystery series for adults about a detective-turned-restaurant critic named Monsieur Pamplemousse. The author said Paddington saved him from suicide when became overwhelmed with work in the s. He had originally bought the teddy bear for her as a Christmas stocking filler. The couple divorced in after 31 years of marriage. On his way home from work on Christmas Eve in , Bond spied a lonely teddy bear on the shelf in a shop window, and took it home as a stocking filler for his wife.

He called it Paddington because they were living near Paddington Station at the time. While musing over a typewriter and a blank sheet of paper, he wondered idly what it would be like if an unaccompanied bear turned up at a railway station looking for a home. More than 35 million Paddington books have been sold worldwide. The most recent, Paddington's Finest Hour, was published in April. Charlie Redmayne, chief executive officer of HarperCollins, said he was "one of the great children's writers" who had left "one of the great literary legacies of our time".

Ann-Janine Murtagh, executive publisher at HarperCollins Children's Books, remembered the author as "a true gentleman, a bon viveur, the most entertaining company and the most enchanting of writers".

Lauren Child, the new Children's Laureate , said Bond was "a loveable person" who had been "lovely to chat to".