Michael Bond is best known for a series of fictional stories for children, featuring the character of Paddington Bear.
25 Facts About Michael Bond
2.
Thomas Michael Bond was born on 13 January 1926 in Newbury, Berkshire.
3.
Michael Bond was raised in Reading, where his visits to Reading railway station to watch the Cornish Riviera Express pass through started a love of trains.
4.
Michael Bond's father was a manager for the post office.
5.
Michael Bond left education aged 14, despite his parents' wishes for him to go to university.
6.
On 10 February 1943 Bond survived an air raid in Reading.
7.
Michael Bond then served in the Middlesex Regiment of the British Army until 1947.
8.
Michael Bond began writing in 1945, when he was stationed with the Army in Cairo, and sold his first short story to the magazine London Opinion.
9.
Michael Bond was paid seven guineas and thought that he "wouldn't mind being a writer".
10.
Michael Bond had to tell her that he was not supposed to take calls at work.
11.
Michael Bond stated in December 2007 that he did not plan to continue the adventures of Paddington Bear in further volumes, but in April 2014 it was reported that a new book, entitled Love From Paddington, would be published that autumn.
12.
In Paddington, a 2014 film based on the books, Michael Bond had a credited cameo as the Kindly Gentleman.
13.
Michael Bond wrote another series of children's books, telling of the adventures of a guinea pig named Olga da Polga, who was named after the Michael Bond family's pet, as well as the animated BBC television series The Herbs.
14.
Michael Bond wrote culinary mystery stories for adults, featuring Monsieur Pamplemousse and his faithful bloodhound Pommes Frites.
15.
Michael Bond wrote Reflection on the Passing of the Years shortly after his 90th birthday.
16.
Michael Bond was allowed to keep the publishing rights to his series, which he licensed in April 2017 to HarperCollins for the next six years.
17.
Michael Bond wrote two short films for the BBC: Simon's Good Deed, which was shown on 11 October 1955, and Napoleon's Day Out, shown on 9 April 1957.
18.
Michael Bond wrote one episode of the series The World Our Stage, an adaptation of the short story "The Decoration" by Guy de Maupassant, which aired on 4 January 1958.
19.
Michael Bond's best known television work is as the creator and writer of the children's television series The Herbs and The Adventures of Parsley, again for the BBC.
20.
Michael Bond was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, for services to children's literature, in the 1997 Birthday Honours and Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2015 Birthday Honours.
21.
Michael Bond was married twice: to Brenda Mary Johnson in 1950, from whom he separated in the 1970s; and to Susan Marfrey Rogers in 1981.
22.
Michael Bond lived in London, not far from Paddington Station, the place that inspired many of his books.
23.
Michael Bond died in London on 27 June 2017, at the age of 91.
24.
Michael Bond is buried in Paddington Old Cemetery close to where he lived.
25.
In 2022, on the ITV programme DNA Journeys, it was discovered that Michael Bond is a relative of the television presenter Kate Garraway.