Treasures in Focus - Stamps
Treasures in Focus is a series of pocket guides to some of the British Library's greatest treasures.
The British Library?s Philatelic Collections are the world's largest, most diverse and complete of their
kind. They include a wide variety of items: not only postage stamps, but also revenue stamps (both adhesive
and non-adhesive), postal stationery, postal history materials, meter stamps, postal orders, paper money, and more besides. About half are from Great Britain. The rest come from the British Empire, British Commonwealth and
foreign countries.
This pocket-sized introduction illustrates some of the most unusual and rare stamps in the collections. The accompanying text by David Beech, Head of the Philatelic Collections at the British Library, explains the origin and background to the stamps, and describes the way in which they were produced, and what today makes the stamp so uncommon.
