|
1st
class: Edward VII (1901-1910) |
|
|
|
The MS takes a separate look at the life and times of the age, featuring events and individuals from the reigns. The events featured are: 1st Class: Scott Expedition –
1912 68p: Second World War –
1939–1945 76p: Football Champions – 1966 £1.00: Channel Tunnel – 1996 The border design features a timeline of the period. The
image is a design mock-up and contains a number of errors,
which were corrected before printing.)
|
||
Acknowledgements: Edward VII, 1902, and George V, c.1911, by Sir Luke Fildes, The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II; Edward VIII, c.1920, Reginald Grenville Eves © National Portrait Gallery, London; George VI, c.1949–52, Denis Quintin Fildes © reserved/The Royal Collection; Queen Elizabeth II (b.1926), 1954 (oil on canvas), Fishmongers’ Hall, London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library, portrait by Pietro Annigoni, Camera Press London. |
1st Class – Edward VII (1901-1910)
Edward VII was the first British
monarch of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. During the widowhood of
his mother, Queen Victoria, he was largely excluded from political power
and came to personify the fashionable, leisured elite.
The Edwardian era, coincided with the start of a new century and heralded significant changes in technology and society. Edward played a role in the modernisation of the Royal Navy and the reorganisation of the Army after the Second Boer War. He fostered good relations between the UK and other European countries, especially France, for which he was popularly called “Peacemaker”, but Edward suspected that his nephew, Wilhelm II of Germany, would precipitate a war, and four years after Edward’s death, World War I brought an end to the Edwardian way of life.
68p – George V (1910-1936)
George was the first cousin of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Kaiser
Wilhelm II of Germany. From 1877 until 1891 he served in the Royal Navy.
On his father’s death in 1910, he succeeded as King-Emperor of the British
Empire. He was the only Emperor of India to be present at his own Delhi
Durbar. His reign saw the rise of socialism, communism, fascism,
Irish republicanism, and the Indian independence movement, all of which
radically changed the political landscape.
The Parliament Act 1911 established the supremacy of the elected House of Commons of the United Kingdom over the unelected House of Lords. He appointed the first Labour ministry in 1924, and in 1931, the Statute of Westminster recognised the dominions of the empire as separate, independent kingdoms within the Commonwealth of Nations. He was plagued by illness throughout much of his later reign and at his death was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward VIII.
76p – Edward VIII (1936)
Only months into Edward’s reign,
he caused a constitutional crisis by proposing marriage to the American
socialite Wallis Simpson, who had divorced her first husband and was
seeking a divorce from her second. The prime ministers of the United
Kingdom and the Dominions opposed the marriage, arguing that the people
would never accept a divorced woman with two living ex-husbands as
queen. Additionally, such a marriage would have conflicted with Edward’s
status as head of the Church of England, which opposed the remarriage of
divorced people if their former spouses were still alive.
Edward knew that Stanley Baldwin’s government would resign if the marriage went ahead, which could have dragged the King into a general election and ruined irreparably his status as a politically neutral constitutional monarch. Rather than give up Mrs. Simpson, Edward abdicated. He was succeeded by his younger brother Albert, who chose the regal name George VI. With a reign of 325 days, Edward was one of the shortest-reigning monarchs in British history. He was never crowned. After his abdication, he was created Duke of Windsor.
£1.00 – George VI (1936-1952)
1st Class: Scott Expedition – 1912 South Pole
Captain Robert Falcon Scott of the Royal Navy led an expedition to
the South Pole, which he and his four-man team reached on 17 January
1912, only to find that they had been beaten by a Norwegian expedition
33 days previously. On their way back to camp, through appalling
blizzards, they were assailed by exhaustion, malnutrition and frostbite,
and all sadly perished. The stamp marks the centenary of Scott’s team
reaching the South Pole in one of the most famous expeditions in British
history.
The designs are by Atelier Works, and the 27 x 37mm stamps are printed in lithography by Cartor Security Printers, Meacé, France, in sheets of 25/50, perf 14 x 14.
The miniature sheet is 123 x 70mm, also perf 14 x 14. All images are Copyright Royal Mail 2011/2.
Products available from Royal Mail:
Mint set -- Mint miniature sheet -- Press Sheet of 21 uncut MS --
Presentation Pack (set & MS)
Set on PO FDC and MS on PO FDC -- Set of 10 Stamp Cards -- Cachet Cover
Special Postmarks
Postmarks available for the day of issue will be shown here, these may
not be to scale. These postmarks cannot be obtained after the date
of issue.
|
||||
Ref FD1205 Philatelic Bureau Official Postmark |
Ref FD1206 Windsor Official Postmark |
Ref FD1206N Windsor non-pictorial postmark. | Ref L12389 First day of issue Buckingham Palace, London Timeline postmark | Ref L12394 London SW1 |
Ref L12395 London W1 |
Ref L12391 1937-1952 King George VI & Queen Elizabeth, Windsor |
Ref L12390 Windsor | Ref L12393 The Age of the Windsors & Saxe-Coburg Gotha, London |
Ref L12392 Courage, Endurance, Sacrifice, Duty, In memoriam
Captain Robert Scott, Cambridge |
Ref M12403 Edward Wilson of the Antarctic, Cheltenham Glos |
Ref M12401 Windsor View Birmingham |
Ref L4666 Buckingham Palace, London SW |
RefW12406 Scott of the Antarctic, Plymouth |
Ref L4680 Windsor Castle |
If you would like to know when this page is updated, please use the ChangeDetection panel next to the stamp images.
If you have any questions about these stamps please email
us.
NB: all emails should be acknowledged in 1-2 days unless
the office is closed. If you do not receive an acknowledgement please
email us from a different address (eg hotmail, gmail).
This page updated 13 January 2012