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Michael Bond's Paddington Bear has become one of the classic characters in children's literature.
A chance encounter with a toy bear in a London shop spawned a long line of books, a BBC TV series, a feature film and a lot of merchandise.
A prolific writer, he also created The Herbs, featuring Parsley the Lion, which became a successful TV series and the tale-telling guinea pig, Olga da Polga.
And for adults there was Monsieur Pamplemousse, the retired detective turned restaurant critic and his bloodhound, Pommes Frites.
Thomas Michael Bond was born on 13 January 1926 in Newbury and raised in nearby Reading. One of his earliest childhood memories was standing by the railway line to watch the Cornish Riviera Express thunder past on its way from Paddington to Penzance.
Bond's father was the mild-mannered manager of the local post office and was the basis for the character of Paddington Bear, the unassuming ursine stowaway.
"My father was a very polite man and he always wore a hat," Bond said. "We'd go on holiday to the Isle of Wight and he used to go in the sea with his trousers rolled up and keep his hat on in case he met someone he knew and would have something to raise. He would have been mortified if he hadn't."
His parents instilled in him a love of books and he later remembered never going to sleep without a bedtime story.
