Ten years after the HMT Empire Windrush brought Britain's first major influx of West Indian immigrants to the United Kingdom, and 10 years before Conservative MP Enoch Powell made his famously inflammatory speech predicting "rivers of blood" if Britain allowed mass migration, a fictional Peruvian orphan arrived in London with a tag hanging round his neck that said: "Please look after this bear. Thank you."
In his 60th anniversary year, Paddington Bear has now made his way from London to Tokyo in the form of a traveling exhibition. As well as being a straight-up treat for fans, Anglophiles in general should enjoy the extensive collection of illustrations and memorabilia that provides a tangential look at Britain's postwar history and visual culture.
Michael Bond (1926-2017), the creator of the most English of Peruvian bears, served in the Royal Air Force and British Army, and based the character of Paddington partly on the sight of young evacuees in World War II. The children were moved out of British cities into the countryside in order to avoid routine bombing campaigns by the Germans, and were required to have labels pinned to their clothes that stated their name, home address and destination.
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