![]() ![]() ![]() Yet I am not alone in barely using them the pandemic has only hastened a postal freefall, from a peak of just over 20bn letters sent via Royal Mail in 2005 (in the same year, the proportion of UK households with the internet tipped over 50%), to fewer than 8bn in 2020-21. The current stamps, originally designed by the artist Arnold Machin, have used the same sculpted profile of Queen Elizabeth II for the past 55 years. But the definitives have changed little in 180 years. Monarchs and colours have come and gone, and perforations and self-adhesion arrived. Instead, a portrait of Queen Victoria in profile was added. There was no need to include a country name – there were no stamps anywhere else, after all. The first stamp was also a triumph of design. Stamps were as significant an innovation in communication as telephones or web-connected home computers would be. Dozens of countries swiftly copied Hill’s example. Letter writing stopped being an elite pursuit and the postal service became profitable. In the first year of the Penny Black, the number of letters sent more than doubled – then doubled again by 1850. In a research paper he posted to the government, he proposed a pre-paid stamp with the flat cost of a penny. But he took it upon himself to propose radical change. ![]() Rowland Hill, a schoolmaster turned social reformer, had no official standing. It was a widely abused privilege – in the 1830s, politicians were writing an improbable 7m letters a year. For example, MPs and peers could post items for nothing. Costs were high and complicated, and fraud was rife. Photograph: Neil Munns/PAīefore 1840, postage was typically charged to the recipient, who could refuse to pay. Since the launch of the Penny Black as the world’s first adhesive postage stamp, the sticky squares have become more than a simple proof of purchase: they are collectibles, artists’ canvases, tools of propaganda and cultural icons.Īrnold Machin, who designed the Queen’s head that adorns current British stamps, pictured in 1997. Yet I’m aware that stamps inspire strong feelings. I don’t do Christmas cards, kidding myself that my preference for digital communication is about saving trees rather than rank indolence. I’m still working through the leftovers from the wedding invitations I sent out seven years ago. I can’t remember the last time I needed a stamp. “I hope it finds you!” she says in a text. In perhaps the lowest-stakes act of sedition ever committed, Johnson writes me a letter, covers the code with one of her protest stickers and pops it into her local postbox. “He made me do it!” she says, practising her defence. “It would be quite an act of defiance, wouldn’t it?” she says. “This is my mini private protest,” she says.īut, until I suggest it, Johnson has not yet dared deface an outgoing coded stamp. She now adds the stickers, which bear an image of a red postbox, to the code before she files letters away in their envelopes. When letters started arriving bearing the carbuncle codes, Johnson asked a printer friend to make her some stickers to cover them so that only the section of stamp featuring the Queen’s head could be seen. She is also reminded of the way the Prince of Wales once described a National Gallery extension as “ a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend” – except this time the “elegant friend” is the Queen. “But the whole point of my society was to give us a break from having to be engaged with digital content,” says Johnson, 49, from her home in Swanage in Dorset. Royal Mail describes the change as a postal “reinvention” that connects stamps to the digital world for a new generation. Swapping definitives, which can still be done after the deadline, is free but will involve downloading and printing a form, or requesting one by phone or letter, and posting it to Royal Mail along with the old stamps. Christmas and other themed special stamps will remain valid indefinitely. Any old stamps must be used before then or traded in. Photograph: PAįrom 1 February 2023, only the new stamps will be accepted. The first adhesive postage stamp … the Penny Black, launched in 1840.
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