Pudsey joins teddy's 100th birthday

The toy bear was named teddy after a US president

Paddington and Pudsey are among furry faces at an exhibition in Liverpool to celebrate 100 years of the teddy bear.

Teddy Bear Story - which opens at Liverpool Museum this weekend - traces the evolution of the popular childhood toy over a century.

The exhibition, which will transfer to London next March, is sponsored by toy manufacturers Steiff, the company that designed the first jointed toy bear in 1902.

A US shopkeeper later made a soft toy bear and named it Teddy's bear, as a tribute to president Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt, who had refused to shoot a bear cub that year.

Vintage Sooty

The term teddy bear was soon adopted across America and Europe.

The display - created in conjunction with the Museum of Childhood, a branch of the V&A at Bethnal Green - features hundreds of bears and bear-inspired memorabilia.

Highlights include EH Shepard's drawings of Winnie the Pooh, a vintage Sooty hand puppet and Aloysius from Brideshead Revisited.

Loraine Knowles, keeper of Liverpool Museum, said: "We are delighted to have the first showing of the exhibition in Liverpool.

"It's going to have wide appeal because most people have had a favourite teddy bear at some point in their life."