Then Paddington has a sticky time of it making toffee in Mrs Bird’s kitchen, and an even stickier time explaining what went wrong.
And who else but Paddington could set Father Christmas’s beard on fire?
Michael Bond was born in Newbury, Berkshire on 13 January 1926 and educated at Presentation College, Reading. He served in the Royal Air Force and the British Army before working as a cameraman for BBC TV for 19 years. In 2015, Michael was awarded a CBE for his services to children’s literature, to add to the OBE he received in 1997. Michael died in 2017, leaving behind one of the great literary legacies of our time.