Tag: Great Britain stamp

In the Britain of the 1960s, bank accounts were only for the top 20 percent. The working class were usually paid weekly in cash, but that left junior salarymen having to endorse their paychecks, often to the milkman, to get their money. A new Labour government knew there must be a better way, and kindly thought to use the established infastructure of the post offices to make it happen. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

The design of this stamp did not age well. The organization was just getting going in 1968 so one can understand the stylized emblem as a way to signal future promise rather than current reality. However now over 50 years have passed, emblems have come and gone and eventually the whole thing was privatized.  I came at this stamp thinking they were talking about some sort of radar technology.

Todays stamp is issue A220, a 5 pence stamp issued by Great Britain on October 1st, 1969. It was a three stamp issue in various denominations showing off new technology at the post office. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used or unused.

In 1959 the government came out with a white paper that challenged that the banking industry was not serving the money needs of the bulk of the country. This confirmed what the Labour side of politics always suspected. The banking industry itself admitted that small accounts were unprofitable and at the time many smaller towns did not have bank branches making it hard for the middle class to access their pay. Many were really endorsing over they monthly paycheck to the milkman. Many other countries offered basic banking services through their post offices, which usually even the smallest village had. A new post office bank started from scratch could also use computers to automate processing and base more transactions off payer initiated wire transfer instead of payee based check cashing or depositing. The term giro was an old term for a wire transfer. The post offices would also benefit. They were already used to hand out welfare/dole payments and dealt in vast quantities of cash. Private banks were charging the post office high fees to do this and a National Giro Bank operated through post offices could take this function over.

The National Giro got up and running in 1968. A lot of money had to be spent to be ready to open nationally and the bank of course started with much infrastructure and no customers. The first few years saw the operation generated large losses  due from the government owners. In 1970, the then new Tory Heath government proposed labeling it a Wilson failure and shutting it down. They instead settled on a reorganization plan to lower losses.

Eventually National Giro was handling one in three wire transfers and was the sixth largest bank in Britain when ranked by deposits. It was the the first bank in Britain to offer an interest earning checking accounts. The bank also had a large stigma. The post offices remember handed out dole payments and GiroCheques became slang for handouts to lay abouts. There was also the problems that checks written by regular account holders resembled dole checks more than a check drawn on a private bank,

In 1989 the system was privatized and sold off to Alliance & Leicester, a mutually owned building society, similar to the old American Savings and Loan. The privatization included a contract that allowed it to keep working through post offices which it did until 2003. Alliance & Leicester was absorbed by the Spanish bank Santander Group in 2010. In 2013 the British post office relaunched some of the old money services under the Post Office Money brand.

Well my drink is empty and while Money will be more popular then Gyro their emblem seems lacking. Strange since current operations seem to spend ever more time on branding instead of doing. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

In the 19th century, there were a lot or railroads built by small railroad companies. The result was the ability to offer an express service from London to Edinburgh. Different companies raced on different routes to get the best time. What better way to ensure a quick trip than booking passage on The Flying Scotsman. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

Here we have a Flying Scotsman  with a furious head of steam making for Edinburgh. The locomotive dates the image to the 1920s. This was after the period of the great races and the competing lines had agreed on a easily doable time of 8 hours and 15 minutes London to Edinburgh or the reverse, It was the time when the image of the Flying Scotsman offering fast and luxurous travel was at it’s height.

Todays stamp is issue A335, a 17 p stamp issued by Great Britain on January 22nd, 1985. It was a four stamp issue in various denominations celebrating the Great Western Railway Sesquicentennial. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 35 cents whether used or unused. The Stanley Gibbons Collect British Stamps agrees on 35p for this used copy but in their view the unused rises to 70p. Arbitrage opportunity?

The direct express line from Kings Cross station in London to Edinburgh Waverly debuted in 1862 under the brand Special Scotch Express. The time was 10.5 hours with a half hour stop in York for lunch. By the 1870s the route was known unofficially as the Flying Scotsman. The service was offered daily leaving both places at 8:00 AM. The long distance required extra coal to be caried and a duplicate crew to switch out at the half way point with the train remaining in motion. Tech improvements saw the travel time drop down to 8.5 hours by the 1880s. The line was operated privately by a consortium of different companies using common railway stock. A competing Consortium left from London’s Pancreas station along the west coast, a route 6 miles longer.

In the period from 1889 through 1896 there were unofficial races to the North trying to get bragging rights on the quickest time to Edinburgh. The train companies denied this was happening, these remember were passenger trains and safety came first. In 1896 a train on the west coast line derailed trying to take a curve at excessive speed. An inquiry found the train had double jumbo locomotives and an inexperienced crew. An agreement was then reached between the competing firms to agree to an 8.5 hour journey time. This lasted into the 1930s.

That the journey was no longer getting faster was not important. In the 1920s the East coast line formally embraced the Flying Scotsman name that was already well known. Heating was added to the train cars and dining cars were added to shorten the lunch stop in York, It was now even possible to get a haircut on board. Meanwhile with less need for speed the load of coal could be reduced and the number of companies involved consolidated.

The Service was nationalized and denationalized and then renationalized on political whim. The train was converted to diesel power in 1962 and stopped  being express. The express service was relaunched in 2011 now in only one direction but with a travel time down to four and one half hours. The service now operates Japanese trains designed by Hitachi.

In March 2020, the service was rebranded the Flying Scotswomen and now sported an all female crew. I am not kidding…

Well my drink is empty and I am going to need a few more after that twist at the end. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.

The Empire needed a boost after the War. By getting involved in a European land war, great losses had been sustained and the distraction had lead to the loss of Ireland and agreeing to the principle of leaving India in 1917. There was a movement to display what was being achieved and what united the people of the Empire in the hope of reenergizing the endeavor. Only time would tell if energy would be created or just a last gasp from dead enders. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your Earl Grey, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

It may seem strange to modern collectors who come across British commemorative stamps on subjects like not British movies and tv shows, but this stamp was the first British commemorative stamp issue. It came a full 84 years after the first stamp. The British Empire Exhibition was designed to show the Empire in a good light. Stamps are a way for a country to display it’s best self. A new road was being traveled. The stamps design by H Nelson was no great success, the lion seems inadequately evocative and George V’s portrait too large. Where was Manchin when you needed him?

Todays stamp is issue A92, a one and one half D stamp issued by Great Britain on April 23rd, 1924. It was a two stamp issue. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth $8.00 used. Out of curiosity I checked my Stanley Gibbons “Collect British Stamps” They state the value up much higher at 15 Pounds used.

The idea of an exhibition in the style of a World’s Fair was proposed by the British Empire League as far back as 1902. The League was a bunch of aristocrats, among them Earl Grey, the man not the tea. Wars kept getting in the way. The site chosen was Wembley which was pretty far out of London but the subway was extended to get there. A large Stadium was built and large palaces were built of quick pour concrete that showed off India as a Hindu Temple, British West Africa as a Arab Fort, British Southern Africa as a Dutch styled Palace, and further Palaces to show off Industry and Art. For the young at heart there was an amusement park with bumper cars and a soon famous soap shop called Pear’s Palace of Beauty. In it attractive models posed in glass tubes dressed as great beauties of history. Two of the girls “Bubbles” and “The Spirit of Purity” reminded you to buy some soap. Every night the RAF put on an airshow called “Defending London” where Sopwith biplanes engaged in mock dogfights with blank ammunition and pyrotechnics. There were only 3 empire no shows, the Gambia, Gibraltar, and yes the Irish Free State.

To promote the Exhibition, a world tour of British celebrities was organized. The leader was a somewhat buffoonish would be politician named Ernest Belcher. He would tell wild stories and ended up enraging the celebrities on the tour. In retrospect, Agatha Christie for one thought the tour great fun.

The Exhibition managed to attract 1.7 million paying attendees but that did not prevent a huge financial loss. The Exhibition was extended into 1925 but then only lost more money. Most of the Palaces were torn down quickly after the closing but Wembley stadium lasted into the 21st century. It did little however to preserve the Empire and convince the people of it’s motto “One People, One Destiny”. Even the British Empire League folded up shop in 1955.

Well I suppose this was a failure but heck sometimes why not just throw a party and see who comes. Please come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.

Given stamp lead times, the stamp designers could not have imagined how much Britain would be thinking about their fleet that spring. It proved a great time to remind of the tradition that was being built on. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

The lead times meant that this set of stamps lacked the current Sea Lord and his innovative through deck cruiser the HMS Invincible that was proving itself in the South Atlantic. Well not really, it broke down making the older bigger HMS Hermes more key. Kind of like HMS Dreadnaught in WW1 actually. That is the real failing of this issue, it is a little too much in the past.

Todays stamp is issue A314, a 26 Penny stamp  issued by Great Britain on June 16th, 1982. It was a 5 stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 50 cents used.

Lord Jacky Fisher became First Sea Lord in 1906. His first act was to retire a number of older ships to free up resources for innovative new ships that naval rivals couldn’t match. An Italian naval architect had proposed to their navy a new class of battleship that  would have all big guns so unprecedented firepower. When his own country didn’t bite he authored an article in Jane’s Fighting Ships that everyone read. Fisher went two better than the Italians. His HMS Dreadnaught would have all big guns but also have 10 knots more speed thanks to the new geared steam turbine propulsion invented by Parsons. British construction prowess would see that it was built in only 1 year. Current Flagships take 10 years or more to build. Thus it was Britain that was first with the most powerful ship. Both Japan and the USA had started construction of innovative battleships before HMS Dreadnaught but theirs only came on line years later, and in Japan’s case short of guns. The innovation of the ship meant that the new battleship from anywhere was known as a small d dreadnaught but earlier ships were now predreadnaughts. A dreadnaught is an old term for a heavy raincoat.

The ship became famous with a different crowd for attracting a notorious hoax. A group of Bloomsberry literary bohemians, some female, dressed up in blackface and Arab male gettup presenting themselves as a Royal Delegation from Abyssinia (modern Eritrea) in Africa. The lead Hoaxer was Irishman Horace de Vere Cole. He had previously presented himself in a similar getup to Cambridge where he was a student as the uncle of the Sultan of Zanzibar. The Captain of HMS Dreadnaught was fooled and gave them a personal tour of the ship.

When war came the dreadnaughts proved to be not so valuable. No fleet just sent them out to go head to head as they were just so expensive. HMS Dreadnaught did manage to sink a German U boat  by ramming it using that extra speed. This was the only sinking of a submarine by a battleship. During the war the all big gun proved wrong and many small antiaircraft guns were added. The ship was quickly retired and scrapped after the war. By then Lord Fisher had moved on to incorporating turbine power to create super cruisers, the battlecruiser.

Well my drink is empty and i am wondering if it would be wrong to toast both the sailor and the hoaxer. Perhaps if I pour two more, a capital (ship) idea. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.

Hugh Dowding commanded the British Fighter Command during the Battle or Britain. One might have expected a more splashy Spitfire fighter to go with that. Dowding’s strategy involved reserves, logistics, and replacements to extend the battle, a strategy he was later sacked for. The simple, sturdy Hurricane more fit his strategy. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This is an issue on British Royal Air Force commanders and aircraft from their period. What struck me was that the post war commanders and their Vulcan bombers and Lightening fighters were ignored. A lot of money was spent on equipment never used. The proponents would say not using them shows success, but different equipment was required for modern warfare.

Todays stamp is issue A352, a 17 penny stamp issued by Great Britain on September 16th, 1986. It was a five stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 30 cents used.

Hugh Dowding began as a fighter pilot during the first world war and was given ever more responsibility in the interwar period. In 1936 he became commander of Fighter Command. He developed a very early integrated air defense system to prevent air attacks on the British Isles. He reached retirement age in early 1939 but was asked to stay in place. After France fell to Germany, he designed a Fabian strategy to constantly harass and inflict losses on the Luftwaffe. This might extend the battle and give time for the army to recover from the Dunkirk evacuation to better face invasion. The strategy worked and Germany switched tactics to punish British cities. This was the nighttime bombing Blitz.

The increased civilian deaths naturally caused much consternation. A rival strategy called big wing involving set piece air battles involving much larger British formations of fighters was proposed. Hugh Dowding was fired in November 1940 in favor of a proponent of that strategy. He warranted no stamp. Dowding was made a hereditary Lord to soften the blow but became much embittered. Surprisingly in his later years he became a vegetarian and animal rights activist.

The Hawker Hurricane fighter first flew in 1935 and was Christened Hurricane by King Edward VIII. It was designed by Sydney Camm and featured the Rolls Royce Merlin engine also used in the Spitfire and the American P51 Mustang. In the quick aeronautical progress of the 1930s the Hurricane was aging by 1940. It was tasked with going after slower bombers and shot down 55% of the attackers brought down air to air during the Battle of Britain. One huge advantage it had was it’s simplicity. It required one third less man hours to build than a Spitfire. It also was frown off aircraft carriers and as a fighter bomber. 14,487 were built by 1944 when production ended before the end of the war. In a strange twist it was built in Yugoslavia prewar. When their supply of Rolls Royce engines dried up, the Yugoslav Hurricanes were reengined with Daimler Benz engines from the Messerschmitt Me 109. This foreshadows Czech, Israeli, and Spanish post war Me 109s receiving Rolls Royce Merlin engines.

Well my drink is empty and I will have to stock up for there to be enough adult beverages to toast the veterans of the Battle of Britain. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2019.

Figures like Henry Stanley become ever more controversial over time. People think more about the cruelty and endless involvement in places like the Congo and less about the adventure and knowledge advancement that such expeditions brought. I think it is safe to assume that Stanley has been on his last British stamp. So travel with me back to 1973 to look at Henry Stanley the man. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This stamp issue totaled nine stamps each with a different explorer and the part of the world they explored. Sir Francis Drake comes out the best in this style of stamp. As a ship born explorer, his map is the whole world.

Todays stamp is issue A236, a 3 Penny stamp issued by Great Britain on April 8th, 1973. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether it is used or unused.

Henry Stanley was born under the name John Rowlands. His parents were not married and he was raised until age 5  by his maternal grandfather. When he died John ended up at the St. Asaph Union Workhouse, where he was abused including sexually. At age 18 John immigrated to the USA landing in New Orleans. In later life Stanley told the story of being hired and then adopted by well off British grocer Henry Stanley, whose name he took. There is some historical debate if this was just a story made up by Stanley when his identity didn’t check out. His biography then tells how he fought in the American Civil War first for the Confederates, later for the Union and finally with the Union Navy. His recordkeeping shipboard lead to his post war career as a freelance journalist.

It was as a journalist that Stanley first got to Africa, traveling with a British expedition trying to save a British envoy being held prisoner by the Ethiopian Emperor Tewodrus II. His stories were popular and he was commissioned by a New York newspaper to be an African correspondent based out of Zanzibar. It was there that he met Tippu Tip, an Arab slave and ivory trader from Muscat that helped him gain much knowledge of central Africa. This allowed Stanley to go on the expedition that found David Livingston, who hadn’t been heard from in five years after setting off to find the source of the Nile River. This lead to several more expeditions that found the source of both the Nile and Congo rivers and recovered a lost Ottoman Pasha in South Sudan.

This al lead to lecture series and book deals in the USA and The UK. From the expeditions Stanley brought back a black boy he named Kalulu after the Swahili word for antelope. He wrote a surprisingly for the time homosexual book about Kalulu whose age he adjusted up and Selim, an interpreter Stanley employed, whose age he adjusted down.  Kalulu died at age 12 when his canoe went over a waterfall. He worked to get one of the falls at Victoria renamed for Kalulu, his one naming that actually stuck.

Later Stanley was commissioned by King Leopold to get a colony going in the Congo. This made him a rival of his old friend Tippu Tip who was doing the same on behalf of Zanzibar. I seemed a race between whites and Arabs over who would dominate central Africa. The whites of course “won” that even if they were less cruel with less slave raiding. Not totally without cruelty. Stanley had to discipline a member of one of his expeditions members who was the heir to the Jameson Whiskey fortune. He had bought an 11 year old girl at the slave market and then gave her over to cannibals. He wanted to make a book of recording how the cannibals would cook and eat her. He died before he could publish his findings.

Stanley returned to England after his last expedition, married and adopted another this time white boy. Stanley was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1898. He died in 1904. His gravestone had his Stanley name and Bula Metari. his name in Africa from the Swahili for breaker of rocks.

Well my drink is empty and I am afraid today I will put the bottle away. My scale on Henry Stanley moves around too much to toast. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2019.

Rerun in honor of the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

Twenty five years on the Throne is quite a milestone, one that many Monarchs don’t make. George V’s Silver Jubilee spawned a blizzard of interesting stamps. With no Empire, Queen Elizabeth II couldn’t match that. but that doesn’t mean  that the motoring industry couldn’t come up with a special gift to the Queen. One that breathed new life into a storied old model, the hand assembled Phantom VI, and allowed it to be continued to be made for another 14 years. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

The 1977 stamp showed a timeless Queen in profile, similar to but not the same as the Manchin image so familiar in British stamps. For the Golden Jubilee in 2002 the stamp set showed Elizabeth’s full face at different stages of life. Royals should have some mystery, so I vote for the Silver Jubilee style. In case you are wondering, a 75 year Jubilee would be called platinum, even though that is usually 70 year anniversary. A cartoon king made it 75 years and they called it the Palladium Jubilee.

Todays stamp is issue A276, a 10p stamp issued by Great Britain on May 11th, 1977. It was a five stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether mint or used.

The Rolls Royce Phantom was a line of very large and heavy limousines that were made by hand at a separate facility under the companies Mulliner Park Ward division. Regular Rolls Royces of the day, the Silver Shadows, had their bodies built on an assembly line by British Leyland subsidiary Pressed Steel at a separate site, only shipping them to the Crewe factory for painting and fitting engines and interiors. This was less special and closely resembled how MGBs were built. The one issue was the limousines were based on much older separate frame models and so the cars were more 1950s cars than 1970s cars. The annual sales of Phantoms had fallen to only a few dozen a year and the price had to rise very fast to keep the operation profitable, but with the similarly made Corniche coupe production winding down, the model, and with it the whole idea of coach built cars did not have a bright future.

The British Motoring Industry decided to make a gift to the Queen a Phantom VI that would go far to bringing the Phantom up to date. The car would finally get the larger 6.75 liter V8 and the more modern model GM made THM400 automatic transmission. The brakes were finally given modern hydolic power assist, though they still drums on all four wheels. Inside the car now had two air conditioners for both front and rear compartments and there was central power locking.

The Queen got a few specials just for hers. The seats were done in cloth instead of the usual leather and the padding of the seats differed from side to side to reflect the different weights of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip. There was a dictation machine built into the rear center armrest. The car received a special two tone paint treatment in Black and Royal Red Claret. The roofline was higher using again the Canberra Roof with larger plexiglass windows for use in processions. The special roof was only ever used on three cars the first used on a Royal visit to Australia, hence the Canberra name. The Queen’s model weighed 6800 pounds.

The rampant strikes of the era meant the car was not actually delivered until 1978 and is still in use. The improvements in the Phantom VI allowed it to stay in production until 1992. The price in America was had gone from $17,600 in 1959 to $1,000,000 for the last one in 1992. The new 90s style Bentley coupes and convertibles had Pressed Steel bodies, so coach making by hand was no longer on the agenda. As the 1990s went along, what had been British Leyland was owned by Honda of Japan and they closed the Pressed Steel division. Rolls Royce had to suddenly spend heavily  on an assembly line to build their own car bodies. The expense contributed  to the 1998 sale of Bentley to Volkswagen and Rolls Royce to BMW. Now the cars are built off platforms of their parent company, The BMW 7 series for Rolls and the VW Phaeton for Bentley.

Well my drink is empty. Come again soon for another story to be learned from stamp collecting.

Sometimes a stamp issue can be overly optimistic about the future. A little bit of optimism is a good thing, but at some point credibility is lost. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

Every week, the British Queen sits down with the Prime Minister and receives a report on the state of things. As with question time in the House of Commons, this potentially is a useful way to hold the PM to account. Queen Elizabeth II has been on the throne so long that her first Prime Minister was Winston Churchill all the way through to Theresa May, assuming she is still Prime Minister in a few weeks when this publishes. Update, nope! I have often wondered what these meetings were like. This stamp is how I picture it. The Queen siting there while the PM gives a report that is long on sunshine and perhaps short on reality. Get real Mr. Prime Minister, turn this stamp upside down and tell the real story.

Todays stamp is issue A157, a 2 and  one/half Pence stamp issued by Great Britain on November 14, 1962. It was a three stamp issue celebrating national productivity year. According to the Scott catalog, this stamp is worth 25 cents whether mint or used. There is a rare version of the 1 Shilling 3P stamp of this issue that mistakenly omits the portrait of Queen Elizabeth. It is worth $16.000.

The reality of British industrial productivity was somewhat less rosy than it appears on this stamp. In 1961, Britain was the ninth most productive nation on earth. By 1978, it had fallen to number 18th. Both Labour and Tory governments of the period had radically increased social services spending. Though the spending was not spent as efficiently as would be hoped, there was a marked increase in the income of the lower class. The spending however created inflation and caused the Pound to be devalued from 2.8 USA dollars to the Pound to 2 for one. This understates the depreciation as the US$ was itself depreciating.

The improvement in the lot of the lower class unexpectedly devalued the value of work  to the next higher working class. This class was heavily unionized and so their devaluation resulted in more radical demands for wage increases. These could not be met and the result was large levels of labor strife, most famously a coal miners strike. Other factors played into this like the stock market decline and the Arab oil embargo.

Britain was ready for a change in 1978 but of course not everyone will approve of any big change. The productivity in 2015(the newest I could find) has Great Britain at number 15. Luxembourg is number 1, the USA number 5. China and India do not figure high on such list as the GNP output per employed person is quite low.

Well my drink is empty and I am always willing to pour another to toast Queen Elizabeth. Imagine the number of hot air sessions she has had to sit politely through over these many years. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2019.

This is a great semi modern stamp. It gently and unthreateningly reminds how things once were. In doing so, it subtly reminds the 1987 Tory who he is, and maybe where a controversial Thatcher fits in. Pretty cool for a small piece of gummed paper that proves you paid the postage fee. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

There is a lot going on this stamp. Three scenes unrelated but brought together by being part of the Victoria Reign that had begun 150 years prior to this stamp. With four stamps in the set, I did another one here,https://the-philatelist.com/2019/03/22/great-britain1988-remembering-the-victorian-era-150-years-later/ , you get 12 views of Victorian Britain.

Todays stamp is issue A359, a 31 Penny stamp issued by Great Britain on September 8th, 1987. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 65 cents whether used or unused.

The first view, on the left, is of the Prince Consort Albert Memorial in London. Prince Albert was a large influence on Queen Victoria, preaching progress, a less political Monarchy, and more looking out for the common man. Prince Albert died young at age 42 of typhoid fever, and for the 40 years remaining in her Reign, Victoria wore black.

Victoria had the final say on what type of memorial should be. What was chosen was a bronze statue protected by a ciborium canopy as in a gothic church. It was designed by Sir Gilbert Scott, a noted period gothic revival architect. The grounds near the Albert Hall had aligorical representations of the people, ideas and places important to Prince Albert. Showing the many aspects of Albert’s life, the Memorial gives a sense of his importance to the era.

The other two scenes are related showing a ballot box and long time but off and on Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. As more people had a say on their political representatives, Disraeli sought to imbue his party with a common set of principles so they would no longer just be vessels used by an individual politician. For the Tories he advocated a one nation conservatism that combined preservation of the institutions, with a program to uplift the common man. On this Disraeli and Victoria were simpatico.

Interestingly the one nation also had an aspect of including outsiders in the one nation. This perhaps comes from Disraeli’s Jewish heritage although his father had converted the family to Anglican when he was 12. As Prime Minister, There was much British involvement in trying to role back the declining Ottoman Empire. Disraeli would probably point to the Suez Canal as a benefit of the policy. It is not hard to see the British, Anglican power being used to move along the idea of a modern Jewish nation state in the then Ottoman territory of Palestine. Well when you include outsiders their goals become your goals. Indeed the current Tory manifesto expands the idea of one nation conservatism to a one world one. Are you sure about that one guys?

Well my drink is empty and this stamp allows for three additional toasts. To Victoria, to Albert, and Mr. Disraeli. Come again next Monday for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

The 25th anniversary of a King’s reign is often a mixed event depending on the remaining health and vigor of the aging royal and assessments of the Reign. King George V was confident enough to go all out for his with a public holiday and much pomp and circumstance. Something went right because here we are still talking about it 87 years later. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

One part of the Jubilee that did no play out well is the stamp value of this stamp. One can imagine the young collector, having enjoyed the holiday and parades soaking this stamp off an envelope that came to his parent’s house in the mail thinking the value would skyrocket at the end of George V’s Reign. Well fast forward 87 years, and if the young collector was blessed enough to still be with us, he will find the value below face value once you adjust for all the inflation. Blame the hobby not the King.

Todays stamp is issue A98, a 1 and a half Pence stamp issued by Great Britain on May 7th, 1935. It was a four stamp issue and the last new stamp of George V’s Reign. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

A Silver Jubilee celebrates 25 years on the Throne. This was the first time Britain had celebrated it. There were Royal Processions and a service of Thanksgiving at Saint Paul’s Cathedral and the Royal Family waved from the balcony of Buckingham Palace. The appearances were so popular that the King took several more open cairrage rides through London for the rest of the month. On one of them, young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were along. The waving from the balcony in full regalia happened daily at the same time for a week.

Congratulations and thanks came back to the King from some unexpected places. A new Jubilee chicken dish flavored with curry powder and mayonnaise was popular. Funnily, the dish was updated for Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee in 2002. The curry, no more India, was replaced by crème, parsley, and lime juice.

In far off Malaya, a businessman who had emigrated from China named Lin Lean Teng who had struck it rich, thanked George V by having a clock tower built in celebration of the Jubilee. It still stands.

In any big party, there will be a few party poopers. Some on the left pointed out that the government paid a great deal for the celebration at a time when there was much unemployment. Well at least the counter souvenir below had a lite touch to it.

Well my drink is empty. Here’s hoping Queen Elizabeth makes it for he Diamond Jubilee this year. If the celebration goes on as long as the 1935 one that Elizabeth herself must remember, I will have to buy a new toasting bottle. Perhaps a toasting case. Come again next Monday for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.