Britain's most spectacular commemoratives, No28: 2007 Beatles 1st class
A set of six aimed at stamp collectors and Beatles aficionados alike used album covers as its artwork, which could be considered the lazy option.
However, making it a self-adhesive issue allowed Royal Mail to experiment with asymmetric perforations, which it cleverly used to suggest a pile of LPs casually arranged. And on top in this case is the revered Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, whose sleeve design is iconic in its own right, with its montage of celebrity faces, including those of writers, musicians, film stars and Indian gurus.
Although many of these are historical characters, the ban on depicting living people on British stamps was never more brazenly flouted!
Design: Johnson Banks.
Printing: gravure by Walsall.
