Royal Mail is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Football Association and the 140th anniversary of the Scottish Football Association with its Football Heroes miniature sheet, issued on May 9.
Eleven 1st class stamps portrayindividual British footballers who stood out in their generation, not least in representing their respective countries.
The designs form a composite image, and the miniature sheet places them all together in a team line-up.
Royal Mail is issuing a set of ten 1st class stamps on April 16 celebrating some of Britain’s most remarkable individuals, on the 100th or 150th anniversary of their birth.
The Great Britons honoured include an actor and actress, a national and a local politician, a football manager, a composer, a photographer, a writer, a broadcaster and an archaeologist.
Only two have featured previously on British stamps, Vivien Leigh in the 1985 British Film Year and 1996 Centenary of Cinema sets, and Peter Cushing in the 2008 Carry On & Hammer Films set.
Doctor Who, the world’s longest-running science-fiction television series, marks its 50th birthday this year, and Royal Mail is issuing stamps on March 26, four days before an Easter special is broadcast.
A set of 11 sheet stamps illustrates all the actors who have played the Doctor over the years, each with the backdrop used in the title sequence in his period.
The earliest two are in black and white, as broadcast.
Scenes from each of Jane Austen’s six published novels feature on a set of stamps marking the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride & Prejudice.
Released on February 21, the stamps use illustrations by Angela Barrett which were commissioned especially for the issue.
The set was designed by Webb & Webb and printed in lithography by Cartor.
Royal Mail’s first stamp issue of2013 celebrates the 150th anniversary of the world’s oldest underground railway.
Issued on January 9, the London Underground issue comprises six separate stamps charting the history of the network, and a miniature sheet of four wide-format stamps focusing on the design heritage of its promotional posters.
The sheet stamps all feature a timeline across the lower quarter of the design, giving the date of the image and using
the livery colour of the relevant Underground line.
The Space Science set, issued on October 16, celebrates the United Kingdom’s contribution to studying the solar system with six eye-catching images captured by satellites.
The issue is claimed to mark the 50th anniversary of Ariel 1, the first British satellite, which was launched on April 26, 1962.
However, all the chosen imageswere captured by later satellites and probes operated wholly or partly by the European Space Agency, in which the UK is a major player.
Royal Mail issued a Gold Medal Winner miniature sheet to celebrate each British success in the Paralympic Games in London.
Each sheet comprised two self-adhesive 1st class stamps of the same design, showing the medallists either in action during their event or on the podium.
As with the Olympic Games six-stamp sheets (October issue, page 20), base sheets designed by True North and pre-printed by Cartor were overprinted with images and inscriptions by six different regional printers, whose identities had not been released as we went to press.
Royal Mail issued its final stamps commemorating the Olympic and Paralympic Games on September 27 in the shape of a four-stamp miniature sheet entitled Memories of London 2012.
In the same format as the Welcome to the Olympics and Welcome to the Paralympics sheets of July and August, it features photographs from both events, with the logos of Team GB and ParalympicsGB and a quote from Lord Coe, the Chairman of the Organising Committee, in the border.
The sheet was designed by The Chase and printed by Walsall in lithography.
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