Royal Mail issued a set of 10 stamps on the theme of Migratory Birds on April 7, showcasing the diversity of spring and summer avian visitors to Britain.
About one in seven birds worldwide make annual, seasonal migrations along well-defined routes between their breeding and non-breeding grounds.
Often this involves travelling remarkable distances over land and sea.
Royal Mail’s set of eight stamps entitled Heroes of the Covid Pandemic, issued on March 23, features colourful designs by children aged between 7 and 14.
These were selected following a nationwide competition, launched last spring with the support of the Prime Minister, which attracted 606,049 entries, recognised by Guinness World Records as the most ever for a competition of its kind.
Entrants were invited to design postage stamps featuring their own heroes of the Covid-19 pandemic, which first hit the UK in the early months of 2020 and has brought death, illness and hardship to many.
Royal Mail celebrated the 150th anniversary of the FA Cup, the world’s oldest and most prestigious domestic football competition, with a special issue on March 8.
A set of six counter-sheet stamps are based on historical photographs highlighting some of the elements that make the annual contest special, while a miniature sheet of four stamps features a selection of FA Cup artefacts from the National Football Museum.
The Football Association inaugurated the famous competition in the 1871–72 season, when just 12 teams took part.
On February 18, Royal Mail will release a miniature sheet of six stamps celebrating The Stamp Designs of David Gentleman.
The stamp-on-stamp issue is timed to coincide with the London 2022 international exhibition, and a limited edition of 10,000 numbered sheets bearing the logo of the exhibition will be produced for sale at the event only, at the same price.
Gentleman, who will be 92 years old in March, is the most famous designer of British stamps in the modern era, credited with more than 100 designs between 1962 and 2000.
Royal Mail celebrated the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee with a set of eight stamps on February 4, all based on photographs of official functions over the past seven decades.
This is the first time a Platinum Jubilee has been celebrated in the UK, as Queen Elizabeth II is the longest-serving monarch in British history; she is also the fourth longest-serving in verifiable world history, and the longest-serving head of state in the world today.
The Queen came to the throne following the death of her father, King George VI, on February 6, 1952.
Royal Mail has declared that Britain is entering ‘a new era for stamps’, as it introduces data matrix codes (also known as 2D barcodes) across the full range of self-adhesive Machin definitives.
Digitally coded 1st class, 2nd class, 1st Large and 2nd Large stamps were issued on February 1, in a new range of colours.
The existing make-up values of 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, £1, £2, £3 and £5 will also be replaced with barcoded stamps on April 4.
Royal Mail issues a set of stamps and a miniature sheet on January 20 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of The Rolling Stones, one of Britain’s most successful rock bands.
Unlike previous issues in the Music Giants series, from 2016-21, the eight counter sheet designs do not reproduce album covers but focus on the Stones as a live act, from archive photographs.
Of the four stamps in the miniature sheet, two feature posed photographs of the band and two reproduce promotional posters for their tours.
The first ever British stamp which could be called spectacular was the top value in a set of five issued to coincide with the ninth Congress of the Universal Postal Union in London.
It is still worshipped by collectors.
At the centre, engraved with amazing finess, is the figure of St George killing the dragon.
This wonder of elegance was the fifth essay produced by the designer to this particular remit, but it was well worth waiting for.
With its narrow frame and bevelled border, the high-value from the Royal Silver Wedding set of two is a stunningly handsome stamp.
A bold but distinguished design, based on a regal photograph by Dorothy Wilding, it resembles the photo-portraits of the King and Queen that many British families had on the walls of their lounges during the war years, in order to assert their national pride and keep up their spirits.
A stamp marking the development of the astronomical telescope as an achievement of the millennium, and name-checking Isaac Newton as a pioneer of the science, carried a very simple and yet absolutely breathtaking image.
It’s a photograph taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, presenting false-colour imagery of the gas giant Saturn, the most visibly dramatic planet in our solar system, against the backness of space.
The planet’s mysterious and fantastically complicated ring system, first observed by Galileo in 1610, is made up of ice, rock debris and dust, with the darker Encke gap caused by the presence of the tiny moon Pan between the inner and outer elements.
