Google showed their respects to Paddington Bear by incorporating his photo into their homepage logo today on the 50th anniversary of his arrival  on the literary scene.  The lovable fictional character in children’s literature is a polite immigrant bear who came from Darkest Peru with his old brush hat and battered suitcase.

Paddington books have been translated into 30 languages and have sold 30 million copies worldwide.    Michael Bond’s first  book A Bear Called Paddington was published by William Collins & Sons (now Harper Collins) on October 13, 1958.   The illustrator was Peggy Fortnum.

Paddington, who loves cocoa and marmalade sandwiches and has an endless capacity to find trouble, but does “try so hard to get things right”.   He normally addresses people as Mr., Mrs., or Miss and very rarely uses first names.  His normal menagerie of friends include Mr. Brown, Mrs. Brown, Jonathan and Judy, Mrs. Bird, Mr. Gruber, Mr. Curry and Aunt Lucy.

Happy 50th Paddington Bear!

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Filed under: Across the Nation