Michael Bond

Thomas Michael Bond was born in Newbury, Berkshire, England on January 13, 1926. He dropped out of school at the age of 14. During World War II, he served in both the Royal Air Force and the British Army. He sold his first short story in 1945 to the magazine London Opinion. Over the next decade, he had numerous short stories published and radio plays performed. After the war, he joined the BBC Radio and later worked for BBC-TV as a cameraman from 1947 to 1965. He gave his wife a teddy bear for Christmas in 1956. She it named Paddington after the London train station near their home. His first book, A Bear Called Paddington, was published in 1958. He became a full-time author in 1965. He wrote more than 25 Paddington books including Paddington Here and Now and Paddington's Finest Hour. He chronicled his life with Paddington in his autobiography, Bears and Forebears. His other works included A Day by the Sea, Something Nasty in the Kitchen, and Monsieur Pamplemousse and the Carbon Footprint. He was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1997 and then a commander of the order in 2015, for services to children's literature. He died after a short illness on June 27, 2017 at the age of 91.