Paddington creator’s inspiring first wife shares in his £9m will
PADDINGTON author Michael Bond left £9.2million in his will and a request that his first wife should be among his beneficiaries, it emerged yesterday.
The children’s writer made sure his former wife Brenda – whose teddy bear inspired the children’s hit – was looked after following his death.
He had originally bought the teddy bear for her as a Christmas stocking filler. The couple divorced in 1981 after 31 years of marriage.
The author, who died aged 91 last June, wrote a series of books about the marmalade-loving bear who emigrated to London from “deepest darkest Peru”.
While musing over a typewriter and a blank sheet of paper Bond wondered what it would be like if an unaccompanied bear turned up at a railway station looking for a home.
He created the bear out of memories of evacuee children in Second World War.
Loved
The idea would become a multimillion pound publishing sensation and Paddington Bear became a much-loved figure in children’s literature.
Translated into 40 languages, the Paddington books sold more than 35 million copies around the world.
Bond’s stories about the lovable bear who lived with the Brown family also inspired two hit films with the latest, Paddington 2, released last November.
The writer based Paddington on a teddy bear which he bought from Selfridges in London on Christmas Eve in 1956 as a stocking filler for Brenda.
His first book, A Bear Called Paddington, was published in 1958 and was later followed by an animated TV show.
Bond and Brenda remained on good terms after their divorce and shared “custody” of the bear which inspired Paddington.
Probate records reveal that he left an estate worth £9,204,533.
His will drawn up in left his the his entire estate in trust for family, friends and any charity chosen by his trustees.
The beneficiaries named in his will include second wife Susan, his two children and four grandchildren, his goddaughter – and Brenda.
The ex-BBC cameraman, who married his second wife in 1981, gave his trustees the power to choose how to divide up the trust and his personal possessions.
Bond’s last Paddington book called Paddington’s Finest Hour was published last April.
He was made an OBE in 1997 and a CBE in 2015 and left his personal possessions to his will’s executors – asking them to hand them to friends and family according to his wishes.
Bond’s daughter Karen said her father, who was born in Newbury, Berkshire, and grew up in Reading, often thought the station name Paddington would be a good name of a character when he travelled to London.
She added: “Had he lived in another part of the country or not travelled by train, he might never have come up with the idea for a bear being found on Paddington station.”