Michael Bond, the creator of Paddington Bear, was born in 1926 in Newbury, Berkshire. He left school at 14 to work as a radio engineer for the BBC until his career was interrupted by the war. In the war he served with both the Army and the RAF, and uses these experiences to paint an amusing picture of the unheroic side of World War II in this biography. In 1958, while back at the BBC as a full-time cameraman, he invented a small bear from Darkest Peru who was to change his life.