Royal Mail has surprised the philatelic world by announcing that it will issue a second commemorative set devoted to the Star Wars film series.
Following the set of 12 stamps and a six-stamp miniature sheet heralding the release of The Force Awakens in 2015, a new issue on sale from October 12 will comprise eight stamps heralding The Last Jedi, which will be released in December.
It illustrates four droid and four alien characters, most of them well-known but one of them introduced in the latest film.
Educational Reading For Generations Of Kids
On September 14 Royal Mail will issue a set of eight stamps celebrating Ladybird books, which have had a huge influence on generations of British children.
The Loughborough-based stationery firm Wills & Hepworth registered the Ladybird name in 1915, and published the first of its small-format children’s books bearing the Ladybird logo in 1940.
With wartime paper rationing in force, it concocted a format in which a 56-page book could be printed from a single sheet of paper.
Workshops wound by wind and water
The Windmills & Watermills set, to be issued on June 20, will salute an endearing and important part of Britain’s industrial archaeology, the mechanisms which harnessed natural energy in the days before steam, coal and petrol engines, and cheap electricity.
Water power, harnessed by a waterwheel in fast-flowing water, was initially used for grinding grain and fulling cloth, and later for driving processing machinery in metal and textile factories.
Wind power, harnessed by sails mounted high in the air flow, was primarily used for grinding corn, especially in areas where flowing water was less easily available.
The Machin Definitive
Birthday celebrations for a very familiar face
Royal Mail’s celebration of 50 years of the Machin definitive comprises two miniature sheets to be released on June 5, the precise anniversary of the first issue.
The Machin Definitive - 50 Years of a Design Icon
One, subtitled 50 Years Of A Design Icon, has six new 1st class stamps, each with the familiar Machin portrait in use since 1967 alongside a preliminary design concept dating from the development of the series during 1966.
The other, subtitled Golden Anniversary Celebration, has seven stamps, six of which are reprints of original decimal issues from between 1971 and 2013, and the other a new £1 value.
A set of 10 stamps to be issued on May 4 will feature Songbirds, the wildlife that is equally familiar to British eyes and ears.
Birdsong builds to a peak between January and May each year, and is the soundtrack to the spring and early summer in our woodland, parkland and gardens.
Some of the featured birds are very familiar, some less well-known and seldom seen.
The Racehorse Legends issue, released on April 6, honours eight equine legends of flat racing and national hunt racing in Britain.
Illustrated by Michael Heslop, each stamp shows a famous horse in action during one of its most celebrated races, with five different racecourses featured in all.
The horses selected are among the most popular and successful in racing history, from the mid 1960s to the present day.
Royal Mail will issue a set of stamps on March 14 honouring David Bowie, one of the most influential figures in modern music.
Issued in the year of what would have been his 70th birthday, and marking 50 years since he released his first album, it comprises six self-adhesive stamps reproducing some of his most famous album covers, and a gummed miniature sheet of four based on photographs of Bowie performing live, in tours spanning four decades.
The self-adhesives have free-form edges showing the arc of the vinyl record protruding from the side, in a style used previously in 2010 (for the Classic Album Covers set which included his 1972 album The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders From Mars) and 2016.
A set of six stamps and a miniature sheet to be issued on February 15 will feature one of Britain’s most recognisable historic landmarks, Windsor Castle.
Founded by William the Conqueror in around 1080, Windsor is the oldest and largest inhabited castle in the world.
Originally it was simply part of a chain of fortifications established around London following the Norman Conquest, but King Henry I began to turn it into a royal palace as early as the early 12th century, and it remains an important royal residence today.
The Ancient Britain set, to be issued by Royal Mail on January 17, comprises eight stamps depicting four important sites and four exceptional artefacts from prehistoric times.
Photographs of the locations and the objects are overlaid with black or white illustrations to bring them to life, suggesting how ancient people probably worked in them and used them.
Overall, the set spans almost 10,000 years of history, from the late Stone Age (also known as Neolithic) period, through the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, to the time when the Romans made their first incursion into Britain.
This year’s Christmas set, issued on November 8, celebrates some of the key secular traditions of the season: decorating the Christmas tree, lighting a lantern, hanging out a stocking, eating a Christmas pudding and making a snowman.
It also illustrates one of the old favourites of seasonal stamp issues, a robin, whose popularity on greetings cards is said to have been inspired by the red coats worn by Victorian postmen.
For the second year in succession, the set comprises six different designs for eight stamps, with the two values for large letters using enlarged versions of the standard 2nd class and 1st class designs.
On October 20, Royal Mail’s Mr Men & Little Miss issue will celebrate one of Britain’s most popular series of children’s characters, created by Roger Hargreaves.
With their bold, colourful designs and simple personality traits, they have have been enchanting children for more than 40 years, branching out from a successful series of books into television cartoons.
It all started when Hargreaves’ young son Adam innocently asked him: ‘What does a tickle look like?’ His father visualised a small orange man with absurdly long arms, drafted an illustrated story about him, and never looked back.
A set of six stamps to be issued on September 15 will commemorate the work of the British author Agatha Christie, who is claimed to be the best-selling novelist of all time.
Christie is most renowned for her 66 murder and detective mysteries, of which 33 featured the fastidious Belgian sleuth, Hercule Poirot, and 12 featured the intuitive English spinster, Miss Marple.
The 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London will be commemorated by an issue of six stamps on September 2.
The fire broke out in bakery of Thomas Farriner in Pudding Lane in the early hours of Sunday September 2, 1666.
For three days it spread through the city, helped by the close-packed wooden houses, thatched roofs, stored materials such as pitch and tar, and a strong westerly wind.
The Landscape Gardens set, to be issued by Royal Mail on August 16, marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (c1716-1783), who is renowned as ‘England’s greatest gardener’, or more properly Britain’s greatest landscape architect.
In designing more than 170 parks and gardens (and in some cases houses), Brown changed the face of 18th-century England, establishing a new breed of country estate which was ‘naturalistic’, carefully landscaped without being formally patterned.
He not only planted shrubs and trees but also moved hills, and dammed rivers to fabricate lakes in strategic places.
The 150th anniversary of the birth of Beatrix Potter will be commemorated on July 28 with a total of 10 stamps illustrating many of the timeless characters she created.
A set of six portray the leading characters in six of her most popular books, while a four-stamp miniature sheet features scenes from The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
Both a storyteller and an artist, Potter (1866-1943) made her name with a series of children’s tales featuring anthropomorphic animals, starting with The Tale of Peter Rabbit, published in 1902.
