The Prime Ministers set of eight stamps, to be issued on October 14, feature some of Britain’s most influential civilian leaders, four of them from the 18th and 19th centuries and the other four from the 20th century.
The office of Prime Minister was not created, but evolved over a long period of time.
Officially, the post is still First Lord of the Treasury, although the term ‘Prime Minister’ came into use as a convenience around 200 years ago.
Royal Mail’s Seaside Architecture stamp issue, to be released on September 18, celebrates the infrastructure that makes the uniquely British seaside holiday possible.
Six stamps from counter sheets feature piers, lidos, bandstands and shelters from around the UK’s most popular resort towns, aiming to illustrate a wide range of architectural styles from their heydays.
An accompanying four-stamp miniature sheet concentrates on the theme of piers, showing four from the Victorian era.
Royal Mail starts a five-part annual series commemorating the 100th anniversary of the First World War on July 28, with a set of six stamps linked to the first year of the conflict, 1914.
Further appropriate issues will follow in 2015-18 inclusive.
If the set looks incoherent at first glance, Royal Mail has made it clear there is a carefully planned rationale behind it.
On July 17, six days before the opening of the 20th Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Royal Mail will issue six stamps to celebrate the largest sporting and cultural festival ever held in Scotland.
This is the third time the Games have taken place in Scotland, after Edinburgh hosted the event in 1970 and 1986.
Royal Mail’s latest stamp issue, Sustainable Fish, issued on June 5 (which is World Environment Day), aims to contrast endangered species in Britain’s marine fisheries with sustainable alternatives.
So the 10 stamps feature five fish whose future is threatened due to over-fishing, and five whose stocks are still high and which therefore offer a viable alternative for consumers.
Each group of five is available as a se-tenant strip.
The Great British Film issue, to be released on May 13, celebrates a selection of the most significant and successful British movies produced since World War II.
Royal Mail consulted the British Film Institute, cinema experts and polls of popular films to arrive at its choice of six to feature on the sheet stamps.
An accompanying miniature sheet focuses on the work of the GPO Film Unit, which produced ground-breaking documentaries for the Post Office in the 1930s, including the much-loved Night Mail.
The Buckingham Palace set, to be issued on April 15, celebrates the history of the Queen’s official residence, which is one of the few working royal palaces left in the world.
Its history can be traced back to the early 17th century, when a mulberry garden was established on the site in London to breed silkworms.
A house built there for Lord Goring in 1633 was replaced on a larger scale by the Earl of Arlington, who was Secretary of State to King Charles II, and in 1698 Arlington House was acquired by John Sheffield, who was created Duke of Buckingham in 1703.
The Remarkable Lives stamp issue, to be released on March 25, is the latest in what seems to have become an annual series celebrating important figures in modern British culture, following on from Eminent Britons in 2009, Britons of Distinction in 2012 and Great Britons in 2013.
Each of this year’s honorees was born a century ago, in 1914.
They include two actors, a theatre director, a writer, an economist, a broadcaster, a scientist, a footballer, a graphic designer and a war heroine.
The last in the Classic Locomotives series of miniature sheets, featuring Welsh railways, will be released on February 20.
Its four stamps illustrate two engines pulling passenger trains and two in industrial use; the earliest railways in Wales were built for industrial purposes, serving collieries and smelting works.
The sheet border has a background image of the British Railways class 5101 No4126 locomotive hauling a passenger train across the Crumlin Viaduct in Monmouthshire, which was the third highest railway viaduct in the world but was dismantled in 1967.
LATEST STORIES
