New York

HE was an orphaned immigrant from "darkest Peru" who took his name from the Central London railway station where he was rescued by an agreeable English couple named Mr and Mrs Brown. They spotted him on the platform, sitting alone on an old leather suitcase and sporting an odd-looking hat and a handwritten label that implored: "Please look after this bear."

The bear sprang from the imagination of Michael Bond, a BBC cameraman who had bought a forsaken teddy bear in Selfridges, the London department store, on Christmas Eve in 1956 as an eleventh-hour gift for his wife. It inspired him to write A Bear Called Paddington, published in 1958.