Paddington and the Marmalade Sandwich with Laura Kitchings

Paddington Bear arrived at a London train station from “darkest Peru” with a battered suitcase and a fondness for marmalade sandwiches. Since his appearance in the children’s book by Michael Bond in 1958, Paddington has become a beloved representative of Britain, even having tea with Queen Elizabeth II in a video made for her Jubilee.

But as Laura Kitchings will show, his seemingly whimsical story evokes themes of immigration, of sugar and enslavement, and of the comfort of food. She will discuss her research on Paddington’s place in popular culture and how his preference for marmalade sandwiches—a food of British migrants—aligns him with the generation of Caribbean immigrants in the 1950s and 1960s and sheds light on Britain’s evolving foodways. Kitchings also explores this connection of Paddington to marginalized groups in the UK, many of whom find themselves dealing with the adverse effects of British colonialism.

Laura Kitchings holds a master’s in liberal arts in gastronomy from Boston University, and she has worked as an archivist at Massachusetts cultural heritage organizations. In summer 2022, her chapter on selected cookbooks produced in Hawai’i was published in “Going Native?”  Settler Colonialism and Food. She has presented her food-related research in various settings, including the Oxford Food Symposium, the Association of Food and Society conference, and the Popular Culture Association conference.