Happy St George’s Day! -
๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ฅ๓ ฎ๓ ง๓ ฟ 23 April 2026 - previous British Post Office and Royal Mail issues commemorating St George, the patron saint of England, on his feast day.
Surprisingly perhaps, there are no real established traditional events to commemorate the saint’s day but the flying of the St George’s cross flag on 23 April still continues. In recent years, right wing politicians have taken a shine to flying the flag and in 2025 thousands of the flags, plus the national flag, the Union flag, were raised on lamp posts in various parts of the country. Those who were responsible claimed it was done with no political intent while others argued it was a right wing attempt to be divisive.
It is worth noting that both William Shakespeare (probably) and JMW Turner, one of Britain’s most important painters, were born on St George’s Day. 2025 marked the 250th anniversary of Turner’s birth, a notable anniversary worthy of philatelic commemoration, but Royal Mail decided otherwise and issued stamps depicting Peanuts cartoon characters and scenes from The Vicar of Dibley instead (though the miniature sheet in particular depicted a scene from the television programme which was so very English - a parish council - a group of slightly eccentric volunteers gathered around a table discussing how to deal with hyper local problems, all at the expense of their own time and money.
Elsewhere in The Commonwealth, the New Zealand postal service released a stamp depicting St George as part of a set of 3 stamps issued to mark the peace at the end of the Second World War.
Shakespeare famously wrote the line “Cry for Harry, England and St George” in his play Henry V and a stamp in the 2018 Royal Mail issue commemorating the bicentenary of the Old Vic theatre depicted the Welsh actor and film star Richard Burton (Henry V can be said to also be a Welshman having been born at Monmouth) in the role of Henry.
So - Happy St George’s Day from here in the English Midlands, “the Heart of England”.
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