More Baroness Thatcher And Another Popular Musician.

In the blog of 3 April 2012, I stated that only one postage stamp had been issued which depicted the "Iron Lady", Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister at the time of the Falklands Conflict. I illustrated the stamp issued by Kenya in 1988. I have now found a couple more items lurking in my collection which depict her: one is a pre-stamped postcard produced by the Post Office of The Chinese People's Republic and released on 19 December 1984 which shows Mrs. Thatcher, as she then was, at the signing ceremony of the Sino-British Declaration which was to lead to the return of the British colony of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Behind her is the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, whose resignation speech to the The House of Commons several years later led to Mrs. Thatcher's own downfall. In the picture Mrs. Thatcher is shown shaking hands with the then Chinese premier, Zhao Ziyang.

A further item which depicts Baroness Thatcher is a label issued se-tenant with a 60p stamp which was issued by The Falkland Islands on 31 August 2007 to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess Of Wales. The stamp shows the princess in the midst of a minefield (allegorical for her whole life some would say) - the outlawing of laying mines was one of the causes she embraced - and the attached black and white label depicts Mrs. Thatcher in a similar setting on her visit to The Falkland Islands in 1983, after the end of the Falklands War.

Both of these items are of historical interest and worth seeking out. Perhaps of less historical interest but reflective of modern culture and following on from the blog of 7 April 2012 which mentioned the depiction of two members of The Beatles on a Trinidad And Tobago stamp and the blog of 7 January 2012 which described Montserrat's popular musician stamps, is a sheetlet of four stamps which was issued on 22 October 2011 by Sierra Leone and which depicts four different portraits of the Canadian-based "rapper", Freddy Will, who is of Sierra Leone-American descent. The accompanying publicity stated that he was the first Sierra Leonean-born artist to be nominated for a prestigious American "Grammy" musical award.

I'd never heard of him before but I have now - the power of postage stamps, hey?