Paddington Station, London

Isambard Kingdom Brunel's vast Paddington Station was built in 1854.

Brunel had first run a service from this site to Maidenhead in 1838, nine years after Stephenson's Rocket won at the Rainhill Trials in Liverpool to test the new-fangled idea of steam locomotives.

On Christmas Eve 1956, author Michael Bond spotted a last lone teddy bear on a shelf in a shop in Paddington Station and bought it for his wife. He decided to write some books about the bear and ten days later he had written A Bear Called Paddington. It was published in October 1958 by William Collins & Sons.

Now, 30 million Paddington books have been sold worldwide.

Bond has written a new book, Love From Paddington, which is due to be published this Autumn. It contains letters between Paddington Bear and his Aunt Lucy in Darkest Peru. It's not generally known that bears are very good letter writers.