In 1965 the artist, illustrator and designer David Gentleman approached Tony Benn, the dynamic and radical Labour Postmaster General, to broach the subject of the Queen’s head. The issue? It had to go. What followed would go on to change the face of stamps as we know them.
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David Gentleman was a prolific designer of postage stamps for Royal Mail. His modern and striking designs helped to keep postage stamps moving in line with the cultural shifts of the 1960s, but his 1965 stamps issued to commemorate Winston Churchill’s death had been, for him, a design step too far. The stamps were the first issued under Tony Benn’s tenure and used a striking graphic portrait of Churchill that, under the conventions of the day, needed to accompany Dorothy Wilding’s photographic portrait of the Queen. The result produced an odd imbalance to the design, with the Queen in Gentleman’s words ‘looking over Churchill’s shoulder’. There had also been a separate argument amongst royalists that the Queen shouldn’t share space with a ‘commoner’ (a problem also encountered a year earlier with the release of Gentleman’s Shakespeare stamps) with a line subsequently added to separate Churchill from the Queen. Gentleman thought that the way to solve the issue was to do away with the portrait entirely.
Gentleman decided to contact Tony Benn – who had his own thoughts on the matter – and talk through the design difficulties faced and how he believed they could be solved. Other nation’s stamps included the country’s name. Great Britain who had issued the world’s first postage stamp, the Queen Victoria ‘penny black’, were the only nation not required to use its name. Britain had continued to include the portrait of the monarch on every stamp issued, mainly because there were very few ‘special’ occasion stamps released. The majority of stamps contained the royal portrait with a different colour and denomination. These stamp issues, known as ‘definitives’, still provide the backbone of British stamps produced today.
When there was an occasion of note to commemorate, it tended to be a formal one where it felt appropriate to include the monarch’s portrait. As stamp design developed and became more visually interesting, the portrait limited the design potential. In the case of the Churchill stamps, Gentleman’s previous Post Office Tower stamps and subsequent Battle of Britain stamp series, it caused real design problems. Gentleman also believed that stamps should celebrate more than just monarchs, dignitaries and formal occasions. He thought that, like other countries, stamps should celebrate a nations unique culture, landscape, people, heritage etc. This would allow for more visually interesting subject matter and ultimately more interest for the public.
Benn listened and understood. In his own words he had “wanted more stamps and a wider range of designs” but he knew that what Gentleman was proposing went not only against established practice, but also the Establishment. For the Churchill, Post Office Tower and Battle of Britain stamps, Gentleman had designed alternatives removing the Queen’s portrait – even to the extent of the Churchill design being proofed, known as ‘essaying’. These designs were duly rejected, with Michael Adeane, the Queen’s Private Secretary, stating of the Post Office tower designs “The Queen was not as enthusiastic about these designs as she sometimes is.”
By early 1966, discussions had progressed to the point where Tony Benn asked David Gentleman to create a series of designs for producing stamps with ‘special’ subject-matter. Just as importantly, these prototypes were to include alternatives to using the Queen’s portrait. The stamps brought to life Gentleman’s proposed solutions and were presented as a portfolio called Essays in stamp design subsequently known as the ‘Gentleman Album’. Gentleman and Benn worked closely together on the project and Benn had a real passion and interest in design. Under his Postmaster Generalship, London’s strikingly modern Post Office Tower had been completed and he embraced leading Britain’s communications and technology into a new, modern era. He is now seen as “having done more than anyone else to stimulate interest in stamp design and production.”¹ Benn chose not to include a wider team on the Gentleman Album project and this would go on to cause problems. But perhaps he knew this, aiming to avoid the project being dismantled before it had even begun.
Royal Mail’s Stamp Advisory Committee was, and is, made up of the great and the good of British art and design. They debate, critique and decide on what stamp designs are presented to the Queen for final approval. In 1965 the Committee was headed by one of the 20th Century’s most powerful and influential art administrators and critics, Kenneth Clark. There had already been rumblings within the group about increasing the special stamp topics. The idea had not gone down well. Many inside and outside the Committee believed that widening the scope would trivialise how Britain was represented to the world. The renowned illustrator and designer Enid Marx wrote in her review of Royal Mail Design Director Stuart Rose’s enlightening book Royal Mail Stamps: a survey of British Stamp Design “If it is permitted for the reviewer as an occasional designer of postage stamps herself to air a personal opinion on postage stamp design policy, it is to agree with the view expressed and quoted in this book by Sir Kenneth (now Lord) Clark when he said that the ‘admission of pictorial stamps would lead to complete banality’. This has proved only too true of some pictorial stamp designs, which look like little posters akin to stamps issued by charities.” The suggestion at a Committee meeting that the Queen’s head should be permanently removed wouldn’t have lasted five minutes let alone be open to discussion with the Queen herself.
Benn and Gentleman met up throughout the development of the revolutionary Album, at Benn’s offices in the city and often for breakfast meetings at Benn’s home. Gentleman remembers Tony Benn as “relaxed, encouraging, shrewd and determined.” Benn’s plan had been to bypass the usual channels and present their ideas directly to the Queen (Gentleman decided to included a series of designs on race horses to gain favour with Her Majesty). Tony Benn subsequently said that “David Gentleman wrote to me, along with a number of others, to say that he had many ideas about postage stamp design. I appointed him to prepare an album of designs which the Post Office could issue as special stamps.” Benn and Gentleman’s partnership reflected the client–designer relationship at its best – trust and vision with resolute backing.
When Tony Benn finally mentioned his plan to Prime Minister Harold Wilson, Wilson was a little taken aback and, for politics sake, asked for the Album to also include a set of designs with the Queen’s head put back on. Gentleman had to relent. He decided that the only way to include a portrait of the Queen would be to treat it as a small and simple graphic device: a miniature silhouette. Based on Mary Gillick’s profile of the Queen on British coins, Gentleman experimented with different ‘cameo’ designs. This momentous development predated Arnold Machin’s famous sculptural portrait that would become the defining design for the ‘definitives’ from 1966 to the present day – another Benn innovation. Machin would also refine Gentleman's cameo design to create the silhouette head used today.
The topics Gentleman chose to illustrate for the proposed new direction included British birds, early British railway engineering and British aeroplane design. As with Gentleman’s own art, the graphic styles varied, but each design contained in one of the corners the silhouette of the Queen along with alternate proposals for a small silhouetted coat of arms; a crown; the words ‘Great Britain’ and the words ‘UK postage’. The number of stamp designs included in the album exceeded 100. It was by no means a project of half measures and Benn was focused on getting it through.
When Benn arrived at Buckingham Palace with the Album, the Queen was interested and attentive. As Tony Benn’s diaries indicate, he received a note from Michael Adeane, “You can be rest assured that this is far from being a subject which Her Majesty regards in any way as ‘routine’; she looks forward to the design which you should submit because she realises, better than most people perhaps, that the postage stamp, which we invented, remains one of the best ways of reminding the world of what we are and what we are doing.” Benn spread out the contents of the Album on the Palace carpet and the Queen quietly listened and welcomed the suggestions made. After the meeting Benn travelled back to his office. When he arrived a message had already been sent from the Palace to say that the Queen liked what was proposed, but that the monarch’s head had to stay; happily in miniature silhouette form. A major advancement in British stamp design had just been approved.
To keep up momentum, Benn arranged for the new proposals to be exhibited at a stamp seminar. Many of the examples from the Album were also illustrated in the Sunday Times colour supplement. When Benn finally met with the Stamp Advisory Committee they had decided to ‘go on strike’ over the Gentleman Album. Benn’s diaries noted that “they were angry that the album had been commissioned without their consent, they were angry that they had not seen it, they were angry at the idea of the seminar, and they were determined to teach me a lesson. From my point of view the meeting couldn’t have gone any better.” Ultimately the Committee had no real alternatives to the proposed ideas and the Queen had rubber stamped both the concepts and the seminar. David Gentleman recalls that the Album went on to be well received in the Press and created a good deal of public interest in stamp design and design in general. Something the Queen had also realised.
The Gentleman album looks just as fresh today as when it was first produced, and the topics and graphic styles are something we are all very familiar with. The structure became a blueprint for how subjects are chosen and provided the future framework for stamp design, including the proposed new stamp size.
But that's not the whole story. One element that is often overlooked is that Tony Benn had also commissioned another designer to look at alternative approaches to stamp design. One big difference between their appointment and David Gentleman’s was that Royal Mail and the Stamp Advisory Committee knew about it.
In April 1965, designer Andrew Restall was seconded from his position as Lecturer at Coventry College of Art to be Research Fellow in Stamp Design at the Royal College of Art. Part of Restall’s brief was to “study the opportunities offered by modern symbolism and imagery for more effective recognition, communication, prestige and security.” Why would Benn commission David Gentleman to explore evolving postage stamp design when he had already appointed a designer to work on a similar brief? Perhaps it was a way of throwing the Stamp Advisory Committee off the scent. The Committee would have felt assured that they would be able to input and approve any recommendations put forward from the Research Fellowship.
Once Restall became aware of what was going on he was already several months into his research, and he understandably wasn’t pleased. The Council of Industrial Design wrote to Tony Benn asking about this duplication and requesting that Gentleman’s designs not be released before Restall’s project was complete. The request was ignored. Ultimately, like Gentleman, Andrew Restall went on to design many postage stamps for Royal Mail, including the wonderful 1975 sailing issue. The subject matter of this issue was also criticised for being trivial – by Tony Benn.
Kenneth Clark left as Chair of the Stamp Advisory Committee in October 1965 before the new direction was approved and adopted. He wasn’t happy with “a change of outlook” in stamp subject or design. He believed his replacement needed to be someone with more “liberal views”. David Gentleman himself agreed that “stamps should not become like cigarette cards, with each one a pretty picture. They should be more significant than that.” The developments Benn and Gentleman initiated increased the popularity and profitability of postage stamps. Today an ever-increasing array of populist topics are released by Royal Mail, including Star Wars and Game of Thrones. Perhaps profitability and popularity has ultimately overshadowed the original vision, and “pretty picture” stamps are undeniable, but the events of 1965 overwhelmingly transformed the focus and art of stamp design for the better. And spared the Queen’s head.
1. Stuart Rose, Royal Mail Stamps: a survey of British Stamp Design, p.67
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Tony Benn, Out Of The Wilderness: Diaries 1963-67, 1988
David Gentleman, Artwork, 2002
Enid Marx, review of ‘A Survey of British Stamp Design: Royal Mail Stamps’ in Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol.129(5299), 1981
Stuart Rose, Royal Mail Stamps: a survey of British Stamp Design, 1980