Thomas Michael Bond (13 January 1926 – 27 June 2017) was a British author. He is best known for a series of fictional stories for children, featuring the character of Paddington Bear. More than 35 million Paddington books have been sold around the world, and the characters have also appeared in a popular film series (featuring Paddington and Paddington 2 to date) and on television. His first book was published in 1958 and his last in 2017, a span of 59 years. Early life Thomas Michael Bond was born on 13 January 1926 in Newbury, Berkshire. He was raised in Reading, where his visits to Reading railway station to watch the Cornish Riviera Express pass through started a love of trains. His father was a manager for the post office. He was educated at Presentation College in Reading. His time there was unhappy. He told The Guardian in November 2014 that his parents had chosen the school "for the simple reason [that his] mother liked the colour of the blazers ... she didn't make many mistakes in life, but that was one of them". He left education aged 14, despite his parents' wishes for him to go to university. The Second World War was under way and he went to work in a solicitor's office for a year, and then as an engineer's assistant for the BBC. On 10 February 1943 Bond survived an air raid in Reading. The building in which he was working collapsed under him, killing 41 people and injuring many more. Shortly afterwards he volunteered for aircrew service in the Royal Air Force as a 17-year-old, but he was discharged after being found to suffer from acute air sickness. He then served in the Middlesex Regiment of the British Army until 1947. Author Bond began writing in 1945, when he was stationed with the Army in Cairo, and sold his first short story to the magazine London Opinion. He was paid seven guineas and thought that he "wouldn't mind being a writer". After he had produced several plays and short stories, and had become a BBC television cameraman (he worked on Blue Peter for a time), his first book, A Bear Called Paddington, was published by Collins in 1958. Barbara Ker Wilson had read his draft at one sitting and she then phoned Bond at the number given. She was put through to Lime Grove Studios.