2900. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Happy St. George’s Day From The Heart Of England.

 

Happy St George’s Day! -

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 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”.

2488. 🇮🇲 Churchill In Paris - IOM Commemorates The Liberation Of Paris. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

New issues.

🇮🇲 Isle Of Man Post Office -

29 April 2024 - 80th anniversary of the liberation of Europe from Nazi occupation - 10 stamps (5 stamps commemorate the D Day Allied landings and 5 stamps commemorate Operation Market Landing including the depiction of Manxmen involved in the operation, cost of set £15.50) and 1 Prestige booklet costing £23.50; 2 panes from the booklet - 1 commemorating D Day and the other Operation Market Garden are also sold separately. Designed by Isle Of Man Advertising and lithographed by bpost and perforated 13.5. Rating:- *.

The £2.31 value of the D Day quintet depicts Sir Winston Churchill in Paris after its liberation by Allied forces. He is shown waving to celebrating crowds alongside the French leader De Gaulle who had fled to England when the Germans occupied France. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Winston Churchill and a number of Commonwealth territories will release stamps to commemorate the significant anniversary.

 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 23 April 2024 - Happy St George’s Day! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Born on St George’s Day - 

And the important English artist, JMW Turner -

And Prince Louis of Cambridge -

2318. 🇳🇿 New Zealand Post To Issue ‘Digital Stamps’ 🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦

New issues -

🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Post -

4 June 2023 - Commemoration of the Most Venerable Henepola Gunarathana Nayaka Maha Thero - 1 stamp. Lithographed. Rating:- ***.

🇲🇲 Myanmar Post -

1 June 2023 - Endemic birds of Myanmar, the Burmese tit - 1 stamp. Lithographed by Security Printing Works (Myanmar). Rating:- *****.

🇬🇧 Royal Mail -

9 June 2023 - Quatercentenary of the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio of plays, Post and Go stamps dispensed from kiosk A009 located at the Shakespeare Birthday Trust gift shop in Stratford upon Avon - Union Flag and Machin Head stamps with new site locating inscription ‘Shakespeare BPT’ and additional inscription ‘First Folio 400’. These inscriptions will continue to be used until the end of 2023.

22 June 2023 - 75th anniversary of the arrival of the Windrush in Britain - 8 stamps. The designs will be revealed to the public at an event to be held at the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton on 15 June 2023. The stamps were designed by five artists of Caribbean descent. The arrival of the migrants aboard the Windrush effectively began the era of mass migration from abroad to Britain. Foreign migration to Britain was previously noted by one of the four Settlers Tale stamps issued on 6 April 1999 as part of the series issued to commemorate the new millennium.

🇹🇱 Postal service of Timor Leste -

Date of issue unknown ?2012 ?Unreleased - AICEP Lubrapex 2012 philatelic exhibition - 1 stamp. The Joint Stamp Issues internet site has recently reported that one of its contributors, Wenchao Chen of the People’s Republic of China, has discovered a sheet of stamps which appear to represent the issue from the Timor Leste postal service released as part of the omnibus issue of the Lusophone countries issued in 2012. Each postal service released a single stamp commemorating a literary figure of each respective country; in the case of Timor Leste the depicted literary figure is the poet Francisco Borja Da Costa who wrote the words of the Timorese national anthem but who was executed at the age of 29 by the Indonesians the day after they invaded East Timor in 1975. Chen has reported a sheet of 50 of these stamps - the first time that anyone has been aware of them - though they may have been issued almost 11 years ago though equally they may not have been officially released at all or they may have been issued at any time since 2012. News of Timorese stamps is scant and infrequent and the stamps may well have been issued without anyone being made aware of them. We will see in due course. The stamp is certainly in the style of the other stamps in the omnibus.

The imprint on the lower border of the sheet confirms that the stamps were printed at INCM (Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda), the National printing house in Portugal in 2012.

🇳🇿 New Zealand Post -

In the scramble to produce collectibles to shore up its contribution to the finances of New Zealand Post, its  Stamps and Collectables department has announced that it is to stray into the world of digital stamps and non fungible tokens and that its first such products will feature the 1898 pictorial stamps. It’s fascinating how ever more there is a necessity for things virtual rather than real in this world where British stamps feature foreign comic characters and toy elves and goblins. Doubtless someone with money to burn will be attracted by these products (or are they non-products?).

2285. 🇮🇲 Isle of Man Commemorates Quatermass Creator.

 

New issues.

🇮🇲 Isle Of Man Post Office -

18 April 2023 - Birth centenary of Nigel Kneale (2022), Manx writer of The Quatermass Experiment and other television and cinema science-fiction dramas - 6 stamps and 1 miniature sheet containing all 6 stamps. Designed by EJC Design and lithographed by bpost and perforated 11.5.rating:- ****.

🇳🇿 New Zealand Post -

2 August 2023 - New Zealand pets - 4 stamps. New Zealand Post has posted on its Facebook page and  internet Stamps and Collectables site encouraging the New Zealand public to send in photographs of its pets for inclusion in the designs of a set of stamps to be released later in 2023. The generous reward for participating in this exercise will be, “bragging rights” and “each of the four winners will receive a set of stamps to treasure and share with family and friends”. Participants will also be expected to “write a small blurb about why their pets should win the category entered”.