Be ‘more like Paddington’ to bear social media trauma

MICHAEL BOND, the author of the Paddington Bear books, was “bothered” by social media, his daughter has revealed, as she calls on people to follow his creation’s example of kindness.

Karen Jankel said her father, who died in 2017 at the age of 91, was disheartened by a more polarised world and waning empathy before he died.

“I think he found it all rather depressing, and with passing time he hankered more and more for the world of his youth,” she said.

“We’re all going through the most terrible trauma at the moment [with the pandemic] and I think if everybody could be more like Paddington, we will probably come through a bit more unscathed.”

As he “would think about whatever he said very carefully when he wrote”, he was “bothered” by social media, Ms Jankel said.

A collection of quotes from the bear from Peru – How to Be More Paddington: A Book of Kindness – has now been published.

“Paddington as a character is very kind, very down to earth,” Ms Jankel said. “He doesn’t suffer fools. If he doesn’t like something, he was there with his hard stare. So it doesn’t mean to say that you should be totally compliant.”

But she said he showed “kindness and thought for others” which “would make the world we l ive in at the moment a much better place”. In an

‘I suppose Paddington is my escape from the modern world because I find a lot of it very depressing’

interview with The Daily Telegraph in 2007, Bond referenced how much people’s manners had changed since the era in which he grew up.

He said: “I suppose Paddington is my escape from the modern world because, frankly, I find a lot of it very depressing. Everyone seems to be much ruder and more impatient. I thought that when I got to 80, people might step aside when they saw me coming. Not a bit of it. I might as well be invisible.”

Ms Jankel was speaking ahead of World Kindness Day, on Friday.