Press Releases

Honorary degrees for Baroness Hale and Paddington author Michael Bond

Release Date : 05 July 2007

He came from Darkest Peru wearing a duffle coat and carrying a jar of marmalade – and now his Berkshire-born creator is to be honoured with a degree from the University of Reading.



Michael Bond OBE, the man who created Paddington Bear, will be made an Honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Reading tomorrow.



Also honoured, on Saturday, will be Rt Hon. Baroness Hale of Richmond, a legal academic, barrister and judge, who became the first female Law Lord in 2004. She will be made an Honorary Doctor of Laws.



Vice Chancellor Professor Gordon Marshall said: "I am delighted to be able to honour two very different, but equally interesting, people in this years' honorary degree ceremony.



"Baroness Hale is an inspiration and stands for everything we hope our law graduates will go on to achieve. Michael Bond is Berkshire born and bred and has strong connections with Reading and it is highly appropriate we recognise his contribution to literature, and the enjoyment he has given many readers."



Professor Patricia Leopold, head of law at the University, put forward Baroness Hale for the honorary degree. She said: "The School of Law is delighted that Baroness Hale is to become an honorary graduate of the University. Her work as an academic, a law reformer and a judge has inspired, and will continue to inspire, practitioners, academics and students alike.



"It could be said that there are broadly three paths for someone who wishes to pursue a legal career – the legal profession, academia and law reform. In the course of a working life some lawyers practise in two or even all three of these fields. What is rare is to find a lawyer who is a leading figure in them all. Baroness Hale is that rare example."



Michael Bond was born in Newbury, Berkshire, in 1926, and was educated at Presentation College, Reading. During World War II he served in both the Royal Air Force and the Middlesex Regiment of the British Army. He began writing in 1945 and his first book, A Bear Called Paddington, was published in 1958 by William Collins & Sons (now HarperCollins Publishers). At the time, he was working as a television cameraman for the BBC.

After the first Paddington book was accepted, he went on to write a whole series and by 1967 his books were so successful that that he was able to give up his job with the BBC in order to become a full-time writer. In 1997 he was awarded the OBE for services to children's literature. He is married with two adult children and lives in London, not far from Paddington Station. The small bear he created has inspired pop bands, race horses, plays, hot air balloons and a TV series.



Baroness Hale graduated from Cambridge with a starred first, coming top of her year - one of just six women that year to graduate with a degree in law. She went on to take her bar exams, and in 1989 became a Queen's Counsel. At the same time she entered academia at the University of Manchester, reaching the top of that career when she became Professor of Law in 1986. During her time at Manchester, Baroness Hale was seconded to the English Law Commission - the body whose task is to make reasoned proposals for law reform. She was not only the first woman Law Commissioner, but also the youngest person ever to be appointed.



In 1994, after 10 years at the Law Commission, Baroness Hale became a High Court Judge in the Family Division and in 1999 became a Lord Justice of Appeal (a judge in the Court of Appeal) only the second woman to do so. In 2004 she was appointed to the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords as a Law Lord - the first woman to be appointed a member of the highest court in the United Kingdom. She is also the first family lawyer for many years to sit in the House of Lords.



Ends





Michael Bond press call: outside the Acacias, London Road Campus, University of Reading, Reading 1pm on Friday 6 July 2006

Baroness Hall press call: outside the Acacias, London Road Campus, University of Reading, Reading 1pm Saturday 7 July 2006



Please contact Lucy Ferguson if you wish to attend.