Paddington at Large By Michael Bond

“Even Paddington can’t come to much harm in half an hour,” said Mrs Brown optimistically. But he can manage a lot of other things in even less time – like hanging Mr Curry’s lawnmower from a tree-top, or coming up through the bandstand floor during the ‘Surprise Symphony’.

Then Paddington has a sticky time of it making toffee in Mrs Bird’s kitchen, and an even stickier time explaining what went wrong.

And who else but Paddington could set Father Christmas’s beard on fire?