PB

1. Paddington Bear is a fictional character in
children's literature. He first appeared on 13
October 1958 in the children's book "A Bear
Called Paddington" and has been featured in
more than twenty books written by English
author Michael Bond and illustrated by Peggy
Fortnum and other artists. The friendly bear
from deepest, darkest Peru—with his old hat,
battered suitcase (complete with a secret compartment, enabling it to hold more items than it
would appear to), duffel coat and love of marmalade—has become a classic character from
English children's literature. Paddington books have been translated into 30 languages across 70
titles and sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. A much-
loved fictional character in British culture. Unfortunately,
Michael Bond died 27 June 2017.
Paddington is an anthropomorphised spectacled bear. He is
always polite – addressing people as "Mr", "Mrs" and "Miss",
rarely by first names – and kindhearted, though he inflicts hard
stares on those who incur his disapproval. He has an endless
capacity for innocently getting into trouble, but he is known to
"try so hard to get things right." He was discovered in
Paddington Station, London, by the (human) Brown family who
adopted him, and thus he gives his full name as "Paddington
Brown".
The BBC television series
Paddington, produced by Michael Bond and London-based animation
company FilmFair, was first broadcast in 1975. The storylines were
based on comedic incidents from the books, chosen to appeal to the
TV audience which included much younger children than those the
books were written for. This series had an extremely distinctive
appearance: Paddington was a stop-motion puppet moving in a three-
dimensional space in front of two-dimensional backgrounds (which
were frequently sparse black-and-white line drawings), while all other
characters were 2D drawings.
In September 2007, Warner Bros.
announced a film adaptation of Paddington Bear. The film
would not be an adaptation of an existing story, but "draw
inspiration from the whole series" and feature a computer
animated Paddington Bear interacting with a live-action
environment.