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Picture if you will a young man in the late 1930's sitting at the dining table with a number of stamps, still stuck to the paper of the envelopes, a bowl of water to soak them off and his precious stamp book to catalogue them in.
He couldn't foresee what the story was that the stamps were telling him, but looking back now for us it's history and they do tell a story. A story of terrible events whose terrible conclusion was a cataclysmic war in Europe.
On centre top right is the commemorative stamp of King George V s silver jubilee, a year later he will be dead and King Edward VIII (above & left in red) will have been crowned and abdicated. Top right is the coronation of King George VI and the Queen mother, all in one year. The centre top stamp celebrates 100 years of the monarchy & is well into the war.
Bottom left is the effects of inflation on Germany largely caused by the payement of reparations imposed after WWI, sometimes stamps were only valid for 2 days and most were never cancelled. One of them has been over stamped with a higher value to save printing, and the time it would take, rendering them out of date before delivery! The chilling image of the swastika rising over the world while the eagle encircles it is is shown in the centre.
At the bottom right is frances symbol since the revolution, Marianne, and to its left the palais de Luxembourg the seat of the senate, soon to be dissolved. At the top left is the face of King Victor Emanuel III of Italy, following the end of the war a plebiscite forced , he was forced to abdicate and died a year later in exile in Egypt.
And now the stamp book has come to me, it has a story to tell in it's tiny images, I wonder what todays stamps are saying about us.
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