It has been 50 years since A Bear Called Paddington first appeared, and the BBC are celebrating this anniversary by placing 50 Paddington Bear dolls in train stations across Great Britain with a tag which reads “Please look after this bear” and asking the finder to please call a toll free number and leave a birthday message for Paddington, and telling where they found their bear.

A special presentation on BBC4 just featured these messages, along with Paddington history, interviews with the author, etc. Quite good.

It has been over 30 years since the last Paddington book came out, but a new one is due this June. In a fitting example of art imitating life, in the new book, Paddington Bear is arrested and questioned as to his immigration status.