Here's Mr Bond's obituary from the BBC — I was quite moved by the story of how the idea for Paddington first came to him:
RIP Michael Bond.On his way home from work on Christmas Eve in 1956, Bond spied a lonely teddy bear on the shelf in a shop window, and took it home as a stocking filler for his wife. He called it Paddington because they were living near Paddington Station at the time.
While musing over a typewriter and a blank sheet of paper, he wondered idly what it would be like if an unaccompanied bear turned up at a railway station looking for a home.
The seeds of the idea had taken root during the war when Bond saw newsreels of children being sent out from British cities to avoid German bombing. "I had memories of children being evacuated from London with a label around their necks and all their possessions in a suitcase, and this became part of Paddington as well," he said.
"Paddington Bear was a refugee with a label - 'Please look after this bear. Thank you', and he had a little suitcase."