Friday 30 April 2021

1871. ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ฆ Canada Post Goes To The Ballet.

 ๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ฆ Canada Post issued 2 self-adhesive stamps each sold in individual booklets of 6 plus a gummed miniature sheet containing the 2 stamps on 29 April 2021 on the subject of Legends of Canadian Ballet. The designs feature the dancers Karen Kain and Fernand Nault. The issue was designed by Stรฉphane Huot. Rating:- ****.

























































๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ฎ Royal Gibraltar Post Office found it necessary to issue a set of 4 stamps and 1 miniature sheet on 29 April 2021 to commemorate the 10th Wedding anniversary of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. The photograph used in the design of the miniature sheet stamp has to be one of the least interesting photographs of the royal couple ever taken. The set plus miniature sheet costs a remarkable total of £13.31p. The set was designed by Stephen Perera using photographs by Getty Images and the stamps were lithographed by bpost. Rating:- **.

































As April draws to a close here is the list of Commonwealth philatelic entities not yet known to have issued, or are just about to issue, new stamps so far during 2021:-

Aitutaki Cook Islands 

Anguilla 

Belize

Brunei Darussalam 

Cameroon

Cayman Islands

Cook Islands 

Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus 

Dominica

eSwatini 

Ghana

Jamaica

Kenya

Lesotho

Malawi 

Maldives

Mauritius

Montserrat 

Mozambique 

Nauru 

Niuafo’ou Tonga

Papua New Guinea

 Penrhyn Cook Islands 

Pitcairn Islands

Rarotonga Cook Islands

Ross Dependency

Rwanda

St Kitts

Saint Lucia 

Samoa

Seychelles 

Sierra Leone 

Solomon Islands

Tanzania 

Tokelau

Tonga 

Trinidad And Tobago 

Turks And Caicos Islands 

Uganda 

Vanuatu 

Zambia

  Hence the list has now shrunken to 41 entities which have not yet released any new stamps this year (the total last month was 54 - see Blog 1856).



Thursday 29 April 2021

1870. ๐Ÿ‡ธ๐Ÿ‡ญ Tristan Remembers Coinage Decimalisation.

 ๐Ÿ‡ธ๐Ÿ‡ญ The postal service of Tristan Da Cunha will issue a set of 4 stamps on 26 May 2021 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the first introduction of decimal currency in Tristan when South African currency was first used there and then the 50th anniversary of the introduction of British decimal currency in 1971. This pleasing set was designed by Bee Design and lithographed by Cartor and the stamps are perforated 13.5. Rating:- ****. Thanks to Juliet Warner of Pobjoy Stamps for information about this issue.






















๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ช An Post, the postal service of the Republic of Ireland, has issued a pair of stamps titled ‘National Stamp (For People For Planet). The cartoon-style designs by Unthink are not so interesting as you might hope but as one would expect there is a lot of green used in the designs. The stamps are self-adhesive and were lithographed by Enschedรฉ. Rating:- **.









๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ฌ The second stamp in this year’s Quartet from Guernsey Post which commemorates the Centenary of the Royal British Legion will be issued on 15 May 2021. Why a single set of 4 plus the inevitable accompanying miniature sheet cannot all be issued on a single day is a mystery to me. Rating:- ***. 









Guernsey Post will also install a new Post and Go kiosk at the Market Street Post Office in St Peter Port and it will be operational from 10 May 2021 dispensing the Guernsey Flag stamp and the strip of 6 different ‘Bailiwick Flowers’ stamps with an additional inscription for that particular post office. The machine will be GG05.

๐Ÿ‡ฟ๐Ÿ‡ฆ One issue from 2020 which completely escaped my attention was a miniature sheet of 4 stamps released on 9 October 2020 by the South African Post Office to commemorate SASSA, the South African Social Security Association. The attractive item was designed by Rachel-Mari Ackermann. Rating:- ***.























Wednesday 21 April 2021

1869. ๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง The Queen’s 95th Birthday.

 












๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Depicted here are the stamps from the Royal Mail special pane of 4 x 1st Class Machin Head definitives plus 4 x 1st regional stamps (one each for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) plus one stamp-sized label issued on 21 April 2021 to commemorate the Queen’s 95th Birthday. Unfortunately, as previously reported (see Blog 1857). this pane was only available to collectors used on an expensive cover which contained in it a commemorative £5 coin though some dealers were also able to obtain the panes but only for them to use on mail (not to sell them unused to collectors). It’s all very silly and hopefully this latest little trick will not be something that Royal Mail feels it should repeat but as a (hopefully) one off it’s quite interesting. As can be seen in the illustration, the code on the Machin Head stamp is M21L Mail.
















  ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ  With the 95th Birthday of Queen Elizabeth II falling on 21 April 2021, the US-based producer and purveyor of philatelic items otherwise known as IGPC reminds us that it has released on to the market a number of products relating to the royal birthday with the names of Commonwealth territories printed on them. The client territories on whose behalf they have produced these items are Grenada (2 miniature sheets), Grenada Carriacou And Petite Martinique (1 miniature sheet), St Vincent And The Grenadines (2 miniature sheets) and Tuvalu (2 miniature sheets) which are all Queen’s Realms or parts thereof. There are also 2 miniature sheets with the name of Guyana printed on them even though Guyana replaced The Queen as Head of State with a president more than 50 years ago. I have mentioned these in recent Blogs but repeat the information here so that anyone interested in this omnibus can add them to the issues of the other territories also recently mentioned (series of 11 territories including the 3 Crown dependencies, Gibraltar, Bahamas and 6 British Overseas dependencies which are clients of Pobjoy stamps/Creative Direction) plus Royal Mail as discussed above and New Zealand Post.












































































Tuesday 20 April 2021

1868. ๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง A Potted Philatelic Wars Of The Roses.










Since I was a small child, Ladybird books and Look And Learn magazine tucked under my arm, seeing (possibly inappropriately for my age given all the murders and executions in it) Shakespeare’s (and Olivier’s) Richard III on the family’s small black and white television and being a Warwickshire lad with English history all around me (our local parish church dates back to 1084 for a start) history has been my first love (well, dinosaurs were my very first love but when you think about it they are a sort of history or at least pre-history). 

  I loved the tales of Robin Hood and Good King Richard and Bad Prince John (admittedly more myth than history), thrilled to tales of the English Civil War (then I was definitely on the side of the Cavaliers) but most of all I loved to read about The Wars of The Roses, with the medieval glamour of knights in armour, kings rising and falling, battles spread across the English Midlands right up to Yorkshire, treachery, nasty uncles, cavalry charges and manipulative queens and that opening scene of it all, created by Shakespeare, of the feuding lords of the realm gathered in The Temple garden deciding whether to support the red rose of the Lancastrians or the white rose of the Yorkists. It was Star Wars and Game Of Thrones for my generation but the difference was that it was all real history. And who was my favourite historical character? As I wrote above, as a Warwickshire lad it had to be the infamous Warwick The Kingmaker (actually a Yorkshireman but we won’t mention that) who seated and unseated English kings almost from day to day. What adventure it was for a boy growing up in the 50s and 60s. As they say, you couldn’t make it up. I do have to admit that I was probably a little unusual as a seven or eight year old in having, or even knowing about, Richard Neville Earl of Warwick as my favourite historical character but there we are, we all have our eccentricities even in childhood.

  Which brings me to Royal Mail’s latest set of stamps due to be issued on 4 May 2021. What joy this issue would have brought to me as a small boy - a fabulous depiction of the main battles of the Wars of The Roses, one on each stamp (though as a frequent visitor to Ludlow there is sadly no depiction of the Battle of Ludford Bridge fought on the edge of this magnificent medieval town, the capital of The Marches where the young Edward V was living until wicked uncle Richard Duke of Gloucester brought him back to London, shut him and his even younger brother up in the Tower of London and had them both murdered to secure his own place on the English throne as Richard III). Of course the set with a total face value of £11.52 would have been, even today a monstrous struggle to finance for a small boy, I should have had to rely on gifts for my birthday shortly afterwards and probably also a kind and generous aunt who always bought me a special set of stamps for my birthday to enable me to afford the set but the struggle would have been worth it - at last a set of of stamps commemorating the Wars of the Roses. I repeat, what joy it would have given me.

  It all began with the seizure of the throne of England by Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, from the pathetic twerp Richard II in 1399 (we must not be too rude about Richard, it is said he did invent the handkerchief, an achievement of little significance to an 8 year old boy who realised that sleeves were invented before handkerchiefs). The problem was that Edward III, Richard II’s grandfather, had gone much further than having an heir and a spare and had far too many sons so that with the deposition of Richard II there was a general free-for-all of their heirs about who should really be king. When Henry V, Bolingbroke’s son, died at the unfortunate age of 35, he left a child just a few month’s old, yet another Henry, to succeed him. Factions at court, first held in check by the young king’s uncles, sprang up as time went by and the most powerful faction leader was Richard, Duke of York who thought he had a very good claim to be the occupier of the English throne himself. His main opponents were the Beaufort family, lead by Edmund Duke of Somerset, who supported Margaret of Anjou, the wife of the by now adult Henry VI so that the earliest struggles of the wars were more a Beaufort-York conflict than a Lancaster-York war. Inevitably  they all came to blows. It did not help that the king was weak and eventually went mad and was incapable of ruling and this gave no leadership which might have brought the two sides together.

  So let the battles begin. It’s fitting purely from my own personal point of view and my interest in the period that the first battle of the wars should have been fought on 22 May (1455) as that’s my birthday. The first Battle of St Alban’s saw the king’s forces marching towards Leicester engaged by The Duke of York’s army supported by Warwick and his father The Earl of Salisbury inside the town of St Alban’s and the death of leading Lancastrians - the Duke of Somerset (who may well have been the real father of Margaret of Anjou’s child, Prince Edward of Westminster) and of the Earl of Northumberland and his son Lord Clifford as well as the king being wounded in the neck and escorted back to London by York. One battle and the plot is already giving Game Of Thrones a good run for its money. Really you couldn’t make it up.

  One of the £2.55 stamps depicts the Battle of St Albans and what I take to be Warwick The Kingmaker as it is an armoured figure standing beside the banner of the Ragged Staff, the emblem of Warwickshire. So he’s finally made on to a stamp, my favourite childhood historical character. 









  The Wars continued until 1487 when the ultimately triumphant Lancastrian heir, a Welshman called Henry Tudor, not then entirely secure on the throne as Henry VII, was forced to fight the Battle of Stoke against the Earl of Lincoln, yet another Plantagenet heir. In between 1455 and 1457 scores of aristocrats had died in battle or been executed by victorious rivals - Richard Duke of York after the Battle of Wakefield (1460), The Kingmaker (having changed sides a few times) at the Battle of Barnet (1471), the Lancastrian Prince of Wales (Margaret’s son) at the Battle of Tewkesbury on 4 May 1471 on what is now known as Bloody Meadow by Tewkesbury Abbey (this issue is released on the precise anniversary of that event which saw the end of the main Lancastrian hope to defeat the Yorkists until 1485/when Tudor defeated wicked Uncle Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field (famously in recent times his remains were unearthed under a modern day car park in Leicester and reburied with full ceremony in Leicester Cathedral which was not a bad outcome for a vicious child killer, regicide (he may well have killed Henry VI), despot and all-round bad egg (Shakespeare also portrayed him as having killed his wife Anne Neville, the Kingmaker’s daughter and young widow of the murdered Prince of Wales).
























  One day one side was up, the next day it was down. Edward the young Duke of York, after Richard York’s death, supported by Warwick, crushed the Lancastrians at the terrible and bloody Battle of Towton in Yorkshire, fought in a snow storm in 1461, and as a result Henry VI and Margaret with the Prince of Wales fled to Scotland. But Edward, now king, alienated Warwick by marrying Elizabeth Woodville who brought with her the baggage of her rather worthless family who began to take over The Kingmaker’s former power in the realm and in 1470 he changed sides and reinstalled Henry VI as king. Edward soon returned to England and met Warwick at Barnet in 1471 where the Kingmaker proved to have played his last roll of the dice and shortly afterwards Edward cemented his kingship at Tewkesbury, until his death in 1483, by arranging the murder of Henry VI in the Tower. 

















  The final chapter was then written with the 2 year reign of Richard III culminating in his death at Bosworth uttering (or maybe not) the famous words from the play, “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse” as the Lancastrians closed in on him and did him to death. And so we had the Tudors and that’s a whole brand new story.









Dramatis personnae:- 

  Some of the actors in this 32 year long drama have been depicted on stamps before, including issues released by Royal Mail. An issue of 2008 depicted the English kings of the Houses of Lancaster and York including Henry IV whose deposition of Richard II served as a prelude to the Wars, and then poor, pathetic  Henry VI (who was the only English king ever to have a coronation in France as the king of that country as well as England, not that it did him much good - he seemed to have inherited the madness of his French royal grandfather), Edward IV, the poor murdered youth Edward V and his wicked uncle Richard III. The set also included a depiction of the Battle of Tewkesbury on one of the stamps in the accompanying miniature sheet. The following year a set was released depicting the Tudor monarchs and so Henry VII, victor of Bosworth, made his appearance on a British stamp and we must not forget Henry VIII in the same set whose insecurity about the future of his dynasty resulted in yet a few more Plantagenets losing their heads and the whole drama surrounding his various marriages aimed at securing a male heir and the rise of the Church of England and the severance of the country’s links with the Roman Church.


































































  I can not think of any other players in this drama who have made an appearance on a postage stamp apart from the unfortunate Anne Neville, the Kingmaker’s daughter, who was first married to the rather unpleasant (some say), young Lancastrian Prince of Wales who was killed at Tewkesbury and afterwards to Richard III who (Shakespeare alleged) murdered her. 












  A set of stamps on the subject of ‘Battles’ was issued in 2010 by British Indian Ocean Territory and one of the values purported to portray the Battle of Bosworth.












  This wonderful new set of stamps from Royal Mail which commemorates a significant anniversary in the history of England was designed by Royal Mail Group Ltd using superb artwork by Graham Turner (just look at the Battle of Bosworth stamp and look at the depiction of Richard III’s face, Turner has clearly used the reconstruction of the king’s face made after his bones were discovered as a basis for his mini-portrait; what an effort Turner has put into making his designs as accurate as possible). The issue was lithographed by International Security Printers and the stamps are perforated 14. A great issue certainly from my point of view and therefore rated ******. 

  So, I don’t always moan about Royal Mail new issues but I’m not sure that an enthusiastic schoolboy would be able to afford this set.










Monday 19 April 2021

1867. ๐Ÿ‡ฒ๐Ÿ‡น Malta Commemorates The Duke Of Edinburgh.

 









๐Ÿ‡ฒ๐Ÿ‡นI have nothing but praise for the dignified, respectful and appropriate philatelic item issued by MaltaPost to commemorate the late Duke of Edinburgh on 17 April 2021, the day of his dignified and perfectly judged funeral service at St George’s Chapel in Windsor. The issue is modest and shows respect to Prince Phillip rather than being the money making exercise such an issue will be in the hands of certain philatelic agencies. The item is the ‘Map of Malta’ greetings stamp with an attached label depicting a charming photograph of The Duke in his later life. Very modestly priced this may well turn out to be the best souvenir philatelic item of The Duke’s life which will appear over the coming weeks. The cachet on the first day cover describes him as a “Distinguished former resident and friend of Malta”. Tasteful and warm in sentiment. Rating:- *****.












๐Ÿ‡ฒ๐Ÿ‡พ Pos Malaysia will issue a sheetlet containing 10 different Se temku (personalised) stamps on 20 April 2021 to commemorate the Hari raya festival. The sheet is sold either in a folder which also contains 3 different postcards or by itself. 














๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ฎ The Cryptocurrency miniature sheet discussed in Blog 1864 to be released by Royal Gibraltar Post Office in May is now available for pre-order on the Gibraltar Post Office Stamps and coins internet site and the sheet is depicted below. Rating:- 0.