paddington

As a child I loved the story of little Paddington Bear arriving from Darkest Peru with his suitcase and several jars of marmalade. (For the sceptical, there are bears in Peru, Darkest or elsewhere, this kind.) I never imagined him at the centre of an immigration row…

Paddington arrived in London 50 years ago this year. To commemorate that, Michael Bond, Paddington’s ‘Daddy’, has written a series of new Paddington stories set in the present. As you might imagine, the authorities aren’t quite as open-armed as the first time round. Read a preview here, or below.

Paddington Bear faces questions on asylum status

Richard Lea

Tuesday 11 December 2007

The Guardian

Paddington’s back – and this time it’s his status as a refugee that’s getting him into trouble.

Michael Bond, the 81-year-old writer who created Britain’s favourite asylum seeker back in 1958, returns with his first novel-length collection of Paddington stories for 30 years, and the bear in the duffel coat is confronted with what his creator calls a “very different world”.

The opening story of Paddington Here and Now, to be published next June to mark his 50th anniversary, begins when Paddington finds that the shopping trolley he’s left outside the supermarket has vanished and he goes to the police to report it missing. The junior constable he meets soon discovers that Paddington is from darkest Peru, a straightforward admission from another era which takes on a different resonance in the current feverish climate surrounding issues of immigration.