Paddington Bear author Michael Bond remembered at St Paul's Cathedral service

Paddington Bear created Michael Bond has been remembered at a service held in his honour.

Tributes were led by actor Hugh Bonneville to the British author whose Paddington character has been a childhood favourite since 1958.

Daughter Karen Jankel praised her father as a "master of one-liners" during the service at St Paul's Cathedral on Tuesday - nearly five months on from his death aged 91.

A Bear Called Paddington was first published in 1958, with the author writing 150 books in total, alongside 25 additional stories about the marmalade-loving bear from Peru.

Bond said he first came up with the idea of Paddington in 1956 while working as a BBC cameraman.

During the service, Ms Jankel described Paddington as "so real" that the bear was seen as a member of their family and "an extension of my father, which means he will always be with us".

Describing how Bond always signed his books for fans even when he could barely hold a pen, she said: "He respected his readers as much as they did him".

Bond's publisher Ann-Janine Murtagh said that "increasingly Paddington's character would inform" Bond's own thinking and that he would sometimes ponder business affairs by asking "what would Paddington do?"

His books "imbued deeply held values of courtesy, kindness, justice, tolerance, hope and optimism ... often in the form of a small bear with a hard stare", she said, and are "as relevant today" as they were when he first created Paddington.

Bonneville, who plays Mr Brown in the Paddington films, Madeleine Harris and Samuel Joslin, who play his children, read tributes from the author's fans.

He said: "As Stephen Fry put it, Michael was as kindly, dignified, charming and lovable as the immortal Paddington Bear he gave us".