The marmalade-loving bear from “Darkest Peru” embodies the mantra he learned from his beloved Aunt Lucy: “If you’re kind and polite the world will be right.” Paddington is warm, loyal, accepting, helpful – but not averse to giving a hard stare to those who have forgotten their manners.
This is despite – or because of – Paddington’s roots. He arrives lost and alone, a stranger in a strange land who has to rely on the generosity of others before repaying them tenfold by being such a positive presence in their lives.
“Mr and Mrs Brown first met Paddington on a railway platform.” This is the first line of the first book by Michael Bond, published in 1958. Bond was deliberately drawing on the memory of wartime evacuees, with the note around Paddington’s neck reading, “Please look after this bear.”
Since then each generation has been introduced to Paddington and taken him to heart. Every souvenir shop has bucketloads of merchandise and his regal status in society was confirmed when he took tea with the Queen to celebrate the late monarch’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022.
The strength of his legacy is partly down to two hugely popular big screen films. The much-anticipated third instalment is released this week. Expectations are sky-high and tasked with meeting them are a trio of writers.
Mark Burton is a comedy veteran, a lead writer of Spitting Image in the ’80s who has also written Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Shaun the Sheep Movie and Madagascar. He is joined by James Lamont and Jon Foster who as well as working on scripts from the previous Paddington films, are also behind the animated series The Adventures of Paddington. The pair also wrote the sketch starring the Queen.
Is writing Paddington 3 an amazing opportunity or a terrifying challenge?
Foster begins: “Even with all of the experience of Paddington and feeling like we know his voice and know the humour, it’s a…”
“It’s a tough act to follow,” Lamont finishes.
He continues: “This feels like the third part of the Paddington story, quite naturally. If Paddington 1 is about the experience of an immigrant coming to London and finding a home, and Paddington 2 is about what happens when that home gets turned upside down, then Paddington 3 is about what happens when your old home calls you back.”
Mark Burton emphasises that Paddington echoing evacuees and people fleeing for safety has always been foundational to the character.
Michael Bond the creator in 2008. Image: David Sandison / Independent / Alamy
“It’s embracing people that were lost and bringing them into your home and your community,” he says. “I think that was where [Michael Bond] came from post-war. And it became this immigrant metaphor about accepting and welcoming.”
Foster explains how the first film also felt “like a love letter to London”.
“Paddington was stepping into the perfect place for him to live and be welcomed, even though there was opposition from his grumpy next-door neighbour, Mr Curry, who represented that anti-immigrant feeling [and played by Peter Capaldi in dastardly mode]. But Mr. Curry as an idea isn’t so much in the Paddington films anymore. The assumption is everybody has taken Paddington to heart and that the nation does love him.
“In this film, it’s more about understanding that an immigrant isn’t somebody who arrives, he’s somebody who has a place they’ve come from, and that they have an attachment to that place. That might be confusing, it might bring up mixed feelings. It might not be entirely clear where their home is. That’s what we found interesting and we hope resonates with people.
“And in terms of London,” Lamont adds, “the films offer a vision of the London we all believe in. The best London. The London we could have if we were all more like Paddington.”
So how could we access our inner Paddington to make the world a better place? Doing just that is part of the writing process for Foster, Lamont and Burton.
A rare first edition of A Bear CalledPaddington, annotated by the author Michael Bond and illustrated by Peggy Fortnum. Image: ukartpics / Alamy
“We spend a lot of time planning before we’re writing a script,” begins Foster. “But once we’re doing that, you find yourself asking: What would Paddington do in this scene? Is this a correct thing for Paddington to say? Would this character listen to Paddington – should this character listen to Paddington?
“Paddington is an unchangeable good force throughout a Paddington movie. Obviously, he goes on a journey, but it’s the characters around him that have to learn from him.”
Lamont continues: “It’s something Michael Bond said as well. In his own life he would ask himself in situations, what would Paddington do? He would apply that to business decisions, life decisions. He would imagine Paddington next to him, and think, What would this little bear cub say about the matter? I think that is a good way to live.”
“At the other end,” Burton says, “we all deserve a hard stare sometimes.”
Foster jumps in to say that Mark has a lot of Paddington in him.
“I fall off the Paddington wagon from time to time,” he replies, “but he does provide a moral compass.”
Paddington in Peru is in UK cinemas on 8 November.
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