Bond was inspired to write his stories after spotting a teddy bear in a shop window.

“Paddington’s very real to me,” he once remarked. “I think it’s something bears have. So he comes around with me in spirit and I think an awful lot of stories start because you see a sign or you hear some conversation and you think ‘what if?’”

“Paddington is very polite in a world where people have become more selfish,” he later noted. “It’s very much every man for himself now. People don’t make eye contact in London, even walking down this street.”

Bond’s daughter, Karen Jankel, told the Guardian that “the whole world” was lucky to have had her father, whose legacy would “live on forever”.

In honour of one of the shining lights of children’s literature – and one of the finest bears ever to have graced our bookshelves – we present a few of our favourite quotes from the Paddington stories:

As his creator Michael Bond dies, the finest quotes from Paddington Bear