To mark the 150th anniversaries of the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Chartered Institute of Building, a set of four very elegant stamps took town planning as a theme, each showing a view of a city and a related blueprint.
One particularly attractive and effective aspect of all the designs is the three-dimensional effect of the scroll which rolls back to reveal the reality of the buildings detailed in on the plans.
The 28p stamp shows the Bristol Exhibition Centre in Bush House, built in what had been part of the city’s thriving port area.
The 1980 set was among the most elegant of all Christmas issues, and the star of the group of five was the highest value, depicting a display of satin brocade and shining pendants with holly.
The arc of decorated foliage and the complete symmetry of the design suggest security and a welcoming door, beyond which are to be found many treats of the traditional British festive season.
With its deceptively simple design of green and red on white, this stamp epitomises Christmas, and has a very large ‘wow factor’.
One of David Gentleman’s best pieces of design was the set of four honouring champions of reform in the spheres of factory exploitation, child labour, trade unionism and prison conditions.
Dark-hued and bleak, and cleverly showing hands set in very adverse situations, each stamp sums up in an instant what the problem was.
The 11p value highlights the cruel Victorian use of child chimney sweeps, evoking the soot-polluted environment of narrow, jagged, crumbling brickwork through which small boys were forced to crawl.
Fittingly, in a set which was issued expressly to mark the 50th anniversary of the National Trust for Scotland, the most evocative design is one of the two showing Scottish views.
Capturing the sunlight streaming down onto Loch Shiel, it highlights the desolate beauty of Glenfinnan, and the 60ft monument of a clansman which was raised in 1815 by Alexander MacDonald of Glenaladale to commemorate the start of the fateful last Jacobite rising in 1745.
Industry Year was a campaign by the RSA (Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce) to promote and explain industry to the community.
Of the four stamps with a similar design concept, it’s the 34p that catches the eye.
It stars a mouth-watering loaf of crusty bread, well lit against a background of a vast field of corn, under blue skies.
Available from counter sheets and miniature sheets, this set celebrating the 150th anniversary of the double-decker looks most striking in the former guise.
That’s because it comes in a se-tenant strip of five illustrating 16 buses, parked in a row as if lined up in a bus garage.
But of course you wouldn’t get so much historical variety in any normal bus garage.
To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sir Arthur Sullivan, the riot of fun and nonsense that epitomises Gilbert & Sullivan operas was brilliantly captured in a set of five stamps.
Most colourful of all is the 28p value for The Mikado, arguably the greatest and certainly the most popular of the Savoy operas.
It depicts Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner of Japan, in his ceremonial costume adorned with axe logos, holding the large axe which he has never used! Knowing touches are the tilting of Ko-Ko’s head and the partial obscuring of his face with a fan, which allude to his cunning duplicity.
Few stamps issued by Royal Mail have more action realised in their design than this one, honouring the work of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and the importance of international flag signals.
The emergency launch of an Oakley-class lifeboat into a dark and stormy sea is brilliantly captured, with waves breaking over the bow as it hurtles down its slipway towards a brilliant flare fired by a yacht in distress.
At the stern, crew members cling on in anticipation of a rough ride, while the flag signals and pennants at the bottom right give the RNLI’s initials and the year of the issue.
Stamps depicting heraldic symbols are almost always spectacular because of their glorious colour and intricate devices, and this is a particularly stunning example of the breed.
In a set marking the 500th Anniversary of the College of Arms, the official repository of the coats of arms and pedigrees of English, Welsh, Northern Irish and Commonwealth families, it shows the Arms of the College itself.
Flanked by lions rampant is a shield crowned in gold bearing the St George’s Cross, and within each quadrant is a blue dove rising, signifying peace and constancy.
Sport-themed issues today commonly suggest movement, but the set of three heralding the 1970 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh was the first British set to try it.
The designer adapted the ‘foot-exposure’ filming technique which was being trialled by sports coaches to analyse athletes’ movements and thus enhance posture and performance.
The subtle changes of colour across the figures in the stamps also help to create the illusion of action, and the busyness of the designs, not least the 5d showing track athletes, suggests keen competition.
The Germans call it Englandschlacht, but to the rest of the world it is better known as the Battle of Britain – unique in the history of warfare in that it was fought entirely in the air.
The campaign which followed the fall of France in June 1940 was simply for control of the skies over England.
If it won, the German war machine would be able to press home its advantage with an attempted invasion.
Sir Winston Churchill was 90 years old when he died on January 24, 1965.
Remarkably, he had been a member of the House of Commons until as recently as the previous autumn.
As Britain’s greatest parliamentarian and war leader, not to mention a Nobel Prize-winning author, a journalist and an accomplished artist, he was an obvious subject for a set of stamps, but the Post Office established a new precedent in issuing them.
The exact date on which William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon is unknown, but tradition says it was on St George’s Day, April 23, 1564.
The Post Office’s long-standing refusal to countenance stamps in honour of famous people gave it a problem in 1964 when there was agitation for a special issue of stamps to mark the 400th anniversary.
The 1924 three-halfpence for the British Empire Exhibition
Until the mid-1920s, the British postal authorities had consistently shunned the idea of commemoratives, an opinion shared by the 'philatelist king' George V, who branded the notion of special event stamps ‘un-English’.
Before 1924 the British Post Office had issued a few items of commemorative postal stationery, but never a commemorative stamp.
The birth of the stamps
In the early planning for the British Empire Exhibition, a strong case was made that the only special issue should be postal stationery.
