The first Paddington Bear book was published on the 13th October 1958 and Michael Bond went on to write fourteen collections of stories about him along with two specials featuring stories originally published in annuals for the children’s BBC television programme Blue Peter and fourteen other mainly single story picture books aimed at younger readers. The set I have is from The Folio Society and was published as a boxed collection in 2010. Unusually for a Folio edition it wasn’t published by them but rather by Harper Collins, Paddington’s usual publisher and it includes the twelve collections published up until that date in lovely cloth bound volumes. Sadly Michael Bond died in 2017 so there will be no more stories about this lovable bear, but I discovered whilst researching this blog that fittingly Bond is buried in Paddington Old Cemetery in London. The appearance of Paddington Bear in the Blue Peter Annuals came about because Bond was a BBC cameraman, including working on that TV series so he knew the presenters and could incorporate them into stories.

The first book ‘A Bear Called Paddington’ consists of eight connected short stories whilst the remaining thirteen main collections all have just seven each, meaning that there are ninety nine tales in the main block of books, along with those there were a further thirteen stories split across the two ‘Blue Peter’ collections and of course the single story books for small children, so there is a lot to read. The first eleven books were illustrated by Peggy Fortnum and it is her black and white images that came to epitomise the character of the bear as he tries to be helpful but invariably causes more trouble and disasters around him. She however retired from illustrating and the remaining three collections ‘Paddington Here and Now’, ‘Paddington Races Ahead’ and ‘Paddington’s Finest Hour’ were illustrated by R W Alley who clearly based his picture on those done by Peggy Fortnum to maintain consistency.

I’ve loved Paddington since I was a small child, having encountered him first in the Blue Peter annuals and as read out stories on the programme in the late 1960’s. There is just something so beguiling about his well meaning and always polite character and the ways he tries to adapt to his new home in London, which is so different from the Peruvian mountains where he originated from. On arriving at Paddington station having stowed away on a transatlantic ship he is met by the Brown family who take him home and effectively adopt him into their family. Helping him fit in is his great friend Mr Gruber, who owns an antique shop on Portobello Road and escaped from Hungary either to avoid WWII or the suppression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, it is never made clear which, but this gives him useful insights into the problems of assimilation for Paddington. That makes the books sound heavier in tone than they are, whereas they are delightfully comic and clearly aimed at children, although there is plenty for an adult to enjoy. Rereading a few of the books for this review reminded me just how much I enjoyed the Paddington stories in my preteen-age years. The other major character is the Brown’s next door neighbour Mr Curry who is generally unpleasant to Paddington and always calls him Bear, unlike Mr Gruber who calls him Mr Brown. A lot of the stories have Mr Curry getting his comeuppance in some way or other.

Above is the start of the Paddington story in the Fifth Blue Peter annual published in 1968 and this is how I first read Paddington stories and got to know the character, in this one he goes to the seaside and ends up in the lifeboat bought by the Blue Peter appeal that year. Of course the modern films from StudioCanal have brought a whole new audience to Paddington Bear, many of whom have probably not read the books. These adaptations are not based on specific books or tales but rather on the feel of the entire set of stories and they are a wonderful version with the various characters being very much as I imagined them from reading the books and I hope that they do encourage people to pick the books up and discover the vast range of adventures Paddington gets up to. The third film in the series started production earlier this year and it is due out in time for Christmas 2024, the original cast are back together and I hope that when it eventually gets dubbed into Ukrainian the original voice actor for Paddington in that language is available to repeat his performance from the first two movies, although Volodymyr Zelenskyy is rather busy being President nowadays.

Happy birthday on Friday Paddington.