Tributes and fond memories of the late Peter Preston, former editor of The Guardian and chair of the International Press Institute (IPI), were shared with the packed congregation at a memorial service on July 5.

Editors, reporters, family and friends, filled London’s journalists church, St Bride’s in Fleet Street, where Paul Dacre, the editor of The Daily Mail, told the gathering: “For the sake of our industry’s collective memory, we should salute a very brave man of print.”

Poles apart from Peter politically, Dacre nevertheless described him as “a hero of mine”, and praised him for turning The Guardian into a radical, young, modern, global media brand.

A message from another leading British editor, Sir Harold Evans (an IPI World Press Freedom Hero), celebrated Peter’s brave work with the IPI – a sentiment shared by others praising his work on press freedom across the world.

Liz Forgan, until recently chair of the Scott Trust, which oversees The Guardian, described him as “the most modest great man I have ever met”. He had taken the paper from a Manchester daily to a global presence, while “time and again, he bet the farm – to take on the powerful and the unscrupulous”.

His son Ben, executive editor of The Sunday Times, pointed out that when his father, as a student, took over the editorship of Cherwell, the Oxford University publication, he had promised “to liven things up more than somewhat” – and had continued to do so ever since.

Ben also recounted how, as his father finished his final (valedictory) column, published last New Year’s Eve, he was already fretting about a subject for the next week. Yet his father had also concluded: “I’m more fed up with missing the last series of The Game of Thrones.”

An IPI member, Martin Huckerby is a British editor and journalism trainer.