Paddington didn’t originally come from Peru. Michael Bond invented the bear as a result of witnessing Jewish refugee children arriving in London and London children being evacuated to the countryside during World War II, but he initially had Paddington coming from Africa. That changed when the publisher of A Bear Called Paddington (1958) pointed out to Bond that there were no bears in Africa. But South America has one: the spectacled bear, the only survivor of a genus now otherwise extinct.

So Paddington famously comes from Darkest Peru. It was a happy correction. Britain has little colonial past in South America: Paddington, arriving in London as a stowaway, symbolised the experience of immigration to Britain and the country’s benign reception of newcomers without any serious history of imperialism or slavery being involved. Paddington, cutely and safely belonging to an entirely different species, was readily adopted as ideally English with his perfect manners and good cheer, a sanctification consecrated over tea with the Queen for the Platinum Party in Buckingham Palace in June 2022, one of her last appearances before her death.

New Statesman