Wow, yet another ursine soft toy with political implications, though this time it’s a teddy making a gentle point about how society has been changed by anti-immigration hysteria. Paddington, the star of the long-popular children’s book series gets hassled over his immigration status in the latest book by Michael Bond.

Michael Bond, the 81-year-old writer who created Britain’s favourite asylum seeker back in 1958, returns with his first novel-length collection of Paddington stories for 30 years, and the bear in the duffel coat is confronted with what his creator calls a “very different world”. (from the report in the Guardian)

The story is that the Peruvian-originating Paddington reports a loss to the police and gets into some trouble over his immigration status instead. All works out well in the end, of course. (Don’t have nightmares.)

Nice one, Michael Bond, for the gentle jab in the fake-furry underbelly of our paranoid society.

I will forbear (argh) from mentioning that the London Underground Railway Society is about to seize Michael Bond for the name he gave his creature. But be warned” Militant trainspotters can get really obsessed……