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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/28/books/michael-bond-dead-paddington-bear.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fobituaries&action=click&contentCollection=obituaries&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront Mr. Bond said Paddington Bear had partly been inspired by his memories of child evacuees passing through Reading from London. “They all had a label round their neck with their name and address on and a little case or package containing all their treasured possessions,” he told The Guardian in 2014. “So Paddington, in a sense, was a refugee, and I do think that there’s no sadder sight than refugees.” Mr. Bond sold his first short story in 1945, to the magazine London Opinion, and said later that he had written it outside a tent in Cairo. Mr. Bond also wrote books about Olga da Polga, a guinea pig and a mouse called Thursday, and for adult readers about Monsieur Pamplemousse, a culinary detective with a dog named Pommes Frites. But he was always best known for Paddington, whose fame grew wildly in the 1970s after the first stuffed animal version was produced and the first television series became a hit, on the BBC in Britain and later on various networks including PBS, Nickelodeon and HBO in the United States. The merchandising made Mr. Bond wealthy, but the pressure took its toll. “A black cloud hung over me for about two years,” he told the London newspaper The Daily Mail in 1998. “I became overtired and started taking sleeping pills at night and a lot of whiskey to wake me up. I thought about suicide.” Mr. Bond credited the spirit of Paddington with helping him through difficult times. “There is something so upright about him,” he added. “I wouldn’t want to let him down.”