Michael Bond was a British children’s author, best known as the creator of Paddington Bear. Over a career that spanned fifty-nine years, Bond published dozens of books, with more than 35 million copies of Paddington books sold around the world to date. Born in Berkshire in 1926, Bond served in the Air Force and the Army, and for a period worked as a cameraman, before publishing his first Paddington title in 1958. He was married with two children, and passed away in 2017 at the age of 91.