Dinah Johnson sounds a little worried when I suggest she try to subvert the will of Royal Mail. As the founder of the Society for the Recognition of Handwritten Letters, Johnson is a big fan of the postal service. Since the society’s inception in 2017, its members – now more than 700 of them – have romanticized the rituals of affixing stamps and sealing envelopes. But all is not well in this postal paradise and Johnson fears that the British brand, a symbol as powerful as any national flag, is under threat.
In February, Royal Mail unveiled a new design for its standard stamps, which have changed so little since the launch of the Penny Black in 1840 that they are officially known as “definitive”. The new marks – “plum purple” for first class, “plum green” for second – still have the same regal profile introduced more than 50 years ago. But what worries purists the most — and drives Johnson to the brink of direct action — is the addition of a digital barcode to the Queen.
The rectangular codes – which look like QR codes but are clearly not QR codes, which are a special and proprietary type of code – are designed to stop counterfeiting and allow all mail to be tracked to improve efficiency. Correspondents will soon be able to share photos or video messages by associating digital content with their coded stamps. Recipients will see it via the Royal Mail app (currently the codes lead to a short film featuring Shaun the sheep and a plasticine postman).
The first self-adhesive postage stamp… the Penny Black, launched in 1840. Photo: PA
From February 1, 2023, only the new stamps will be accepted. All old stamps must be used before this or replaced. Christmas and other themed special stamps will remain valid indefinitely. Exchange of final documents, 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 sending it to Royal Mail along with the old stamps.
Royal Mail describes the change as a postal “reinvention” that connects brands with the digital world for a new generation. “But the whole point of my society was to give us a break from having to deal with digital content,” says Johnson, 49, from her home in Swanage, Dorset. She is also reminded of the way the Prince of Wales once described the National Gallery extension as “a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend” – only this time the “elegant friend” is the Queen.
When letters bearing the carbuncle codes began to arrive, Johnson asked a printer friend to make some stickers for her to cover so that only the part of the stamp depicting the Queen’s head could be seen. She now adds the stickers, which bear an image of a red mailbox, to the code before storing the letters in their envelopes. “This is my little private protest,” she says.
But until I suggested it, Johnson had not yet dared to deface an outgoing coded seal. “It would be quite an act of defiance, wouldn’t it?” she says. I promise to visit her in prison. “He made me do it!” she says, exercising her defense. Eventually she agrees. In perhaps the lowest act of rebellion ever committed, Johnson writes me a letter, covers the code with one of her protest stickers, and drops it in the local mailbox. “I hope he finds you!” she says in a text.
I can’t remember the last time I needed a stamp. I’m still sifting through the remnants of the wedding invitations I sent out seven years ago. I don’t make Christmas cards, I joke that my preference for digital communication is more about saving trees than being lazy. Yet I am aware that brands evoke strong feelings.
Since the launch of Penny Black as the world’s first self-adhesive postage stamp, sticky squares have become more than just proof of purchase: they are collectors’ items, artists’ canvases, propaganda tools and cultural icons.
Arnold Machin, who designed the Queen’s head which adorns the current British stamps, pictured in 1997. Photo: Neil Munns/Pennsylvania
Before 1840, postage was usually charged to the recipient, who could refuse to pay. Costs were high and complex, and fraud was widespread. For example, MPs and peers could post articles about nothing. It was a widely abused privilege – in 1830 politicians were writing an incredible 7 million letters a year.
Rowland Hill, teacher turned social reformer, had no official position. But he pledged to propose radical change. In a research paper he published to the government, he proposed a prepaid brand with a fixed price of one penny.
In the first year of the Penny Black, the number of letters sent more than doubled – then doubled again by 1850. Letter writing ceased to be an elite occupation and the postal service became profitable. Dozens of countries quickly copied Hill’s example. Stamps were as significant an innovation in communication as telephones or internet-connected home computers would be.
The first brand was also a triumph of design. There was no need to include a country name – after all, there were no stamps anywhere else. Added profile portrait of Queen Victoria instead. Monarchs and colors come and go, perforations and self-adhesives arrive. But the final figures have changed little in 180 years. The current stamps, originally designed by artist Arnold Machin, use the same sculpted profile of Queen Elizabeth II for the past 55 years.
Yet I am not alone in hardly using them; the pandemic has only accelerated free mail’s decline from a peak of just over 20 billion letters sent via Royal Mail in 2005 (the same year the proportion of UK households with internet access exceeded 50%) to less than 8 billion in 2020 21. These figures include commercial mail; the smaller number of cards and letters bearing adhesive stamps is likely to be in sharper decline.
Sir Rowland Hill, the teacher who suggested the idea of the prepaid stamp, was commemorated with a special set of stamps in 1995. Photo: Kay Roxby/Alamy
“They’re trying to attract the younger generation by adding a QR code and a video of Shaun the sheep,” said Andrew Jackson, 58, a collector and dealer who runs Tagula Blue Stamps. Like Jackson, Johnson wonders if the change signals the beginning of the end for brands. “At the end of the day, it’s just going to be the barcode, right?” she says.
David Gold, head of public affairs and policy at the Royal Mail Group, knew the coded stamps would cause a stir. “Collectors, traditionalists and royalists feel a sense of ownership of brands,” he says. That’s why the new seals, the designs of which had to be approved by Buckingham Palace, include a false perforation as a sort of screen of dignity between the coda and the Queen (who also faces the other side).
Gold says the codes mean Royal Mail can track all letters, allowing it to better monitor, forecast and respond to regional changes in demand, for example. He is also confident that the unique codes will stop the fraudulent washing of stamp ink and the resale of used stamps – a crime he says costs Royal Mail “tens of millions” of pounds a year.
Royal Mail says the codes only contain the identity of that stamp and cannot include personal details. Gold also rejects the idea that the brand is under threat. “Clearly the direction is to reduce the number of letters, but I think people are still fascinated and motivated by brands,” he says.
Gold shows the popularity of commemorative or special stamps. Such brands were rare before the early 1960s. The government invited artists to submit designs for stamps to mark the 1962 National Year of Productivity, a scheme endorsed by employers’ and trade union federations. Three designs by David Gentleman put it into circulation. In 1964, the famous artist suggested in a letter to Tony Benn, the new Postmaster General, that the stamps could continue to benefit from more interesting designs.
Ben, who was an ardent Republican, shared this opinion, but in their quest to find more room to play on such a small canvas, the men soon learned the dangers of messing around with seal design. “I suggested that the Queen’s head could be dispensed with, which of course never happened,” says Gentleman, now 92.
The new first and second class stamps. Photo: Arch White/Alamy Live News.
In the end, it was the Queen who forbade the removal of her own head, which infuriated Ben. Gentleman came up with a compromise: a simpler portrait of an even younger, uncrowned queen by artist Mary Gillick would be used. The much smaller silhouette, still seen on specialty stamps, left more room for new designs.
Over almost 40 years, Gentleman, who is also known for his watercolors and engravings, has designed more than 100 stamps. In February 2022, Royal Mail reissued six of them to celebrate its most prolific designer. These include a depiction of an oak tree and a tribute to Thomas Hepburn, a 19th-century miner and social reformer.
Royal Mail now produces more than a dozen sets of special stamps a year in a bid to create demand among collectors. This year they include pictures of cats, birds, the Rolling Stones and Covid pandemic characters drawn by children.
Many government postal services are much bolder. In Ukraine, queues formed at post offices in April when Ukrposhta issued 1 million stamps commemorating the insubordination of the soldier who refused to surrender an island soon after the Russian invasion. In the image, the soldier flips the bird on the warship Moskva, which was later sunk, in a visual representation of the message he radioed to the ship: “Russian warship, go away.”
Scanning the barcode of new stamps connects to an app with a video of Shaun the Sheep. Photo: Post
But the potential for brands to punch above their weight does little to increase demand. The gentleman says that rarely…
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