Book Review – First Class: A History of Britain in 36 Postage Stamps

By Chris West

Published by Square Peg (2012)

This is a lovely concept which presents episodes in the modern history of the UK since the 1840s, with each bite-size chapter springing from a postage stamp. As a boy, the author inherited his uncle’s stamp album and in later life picked up the collection again. It is a nice graphic idea to start with a stamp or a postal cover, but more than this, they are carefully chosen to match a theme or mood representative of their times. What a country chooses to display on its postage stamps can be revealing in itself, and often what is not shown is most telling. For example, the first non-white face on a British stamp was a boy scout as late as 1982!)

Predictably the book begins with a Penny Black, at the head of a chapter celebrating the entrepreneurs, inventors and industrialists that brought in new technology and social change. This is exemplified by Rowland Hill, who championed the Penny Post and (later) the postage stamp. But there follow chapters discussing the dark side of Victorian industrial exploitation, poverty and hardship. He also addresses the ills of Empire and the sense of national confidence at the end of Victoria’s reign and into the Edwardian period. Stamps we stiff and formal – it was decades before anything as frivolous as a commemorative issue was to appear.

To capture the grim reality of the First World War there is a poignant chapter, introduced by a George V Penny Red of 1916, entitled “The Bringer of Terrible News”, because of course the post was the primary means of communication for the mass of people, many of whom received the dreaded “It is my painful duty to inform you that a report has been received from the War Office, notifying the death of …” And then comes a section on the aftermath is brought in with a 1923 stamp of Germany, a 200 mark stamp overprinted with “2 Millionen” – a token of the despairing times of hyperinflation that propelled Europe towards further catastrophe.

But Chris West writes with a light touch, so there are some well-told anecdotes along the way. Under a 1/- Olympic Games Commemorative of 1948, we find the tales from the “Austerity Games” in which the cyclist competitors had to make their own way to the races, because there weren’t enough buses and in the rough and ready accommodation all athletes had to bring their own towels. Despite the make-do-and-mend goodwill that made the event happen there were still strong class divides in evidence: the somewhat phoney adherence to amateurism in most sports, for example, led to the British champion long-jumper being banned from competing because he had accepted (but not yet even started) a job as a sports teacher! But memorable sporting achievements and characters shone a light into the austere pessimism of rationing and growing nuclear threat.

The chapter ”Whitehall Farce” uses the botched design of a 1957 commemorative stamp to exemplify the overblown bureaucracy of late 1950s government. But at the same time popular culture was taking off in Britain with jazz and rock ‘n’ roll. West tells the story of the formation of the Beatles in a characteristically entertaining way.

This is far from heavyweight history, but is an accessible and enjoyable read, with enough serious passages reflecting on diversity, the UK’s relations with Europe, the Northern Ireland troubles and a very clear section on the financial crises of the 1980s and 1990s. In fact, the author has achieved the clearest explanation I have ever read of Collateralised Debt Obligations and Credit Default Swaps: the CDOs and CDSs that nearly brought the World to its knees. But at least there is a very artful stamp design of Lloyd’s of London! Somehow, West manages to wrap up the on an upbeat note in a final section entitled “First Class”, but I note that the book was written in 2012 and the optimism sounds a bit hollow in the light of events from 2016 onwards. Nevertheless, it’s a fine book and brings those “grubby little bits of paper” to life once again.