After a long pause, the French well-written topical blog Oh les timbres ! is back with daily articles inspired by the (numerous) new issues of the French Post and the news - even sad ones as the first article is about Nice after the terrorist attack on Bastille Day.
Monday again: new banknote, new generation in Britain.
Since Tuesday 13 September, the Bank of England is introducing banknotes in polymer: stronger, waterproof, cleaner because washable.
 |
| Can you spot the publicly known security features on the Winston Churchill 5 pounds note? (Flikr account of the Bank of England). |
Be careful though, the Daily Mail journalist (?) James Smith lost 10 pounds: one fiver melted into the microwave, the other into the water tubes from a washmachine. Never play with money.
Friday 30 September: Remembrance of the Channel Island occupation by the Germans.
On Thursday 29, the Royal Philatelic Society London hosted a conference by Ron Brown on "The German Occupation of the Channel Islands 1940-1945". The first half was a traditional philatelic history on how the local authorities of Guernsey and Jersey managed the needs for stamps, with some liberty from the occupying forces.
On the other half, the paper became tragic with the stories of the arrest, captivity in French occupied prisons and even deportation to Nazi Germany camps of some Islanders for crimes of food stealing, listening to the BBC or for only being Jew. These lifes were recalled by Mr Brown with letters and cards sent to or by them.
The paper is available for all on the RPSL website (pdf file). Members (directly) and non-members (write the RPSL secretary) can access the video on youTube.
Sunday 2 October: British Museum's collection of Middle East postcards.
Last Monday 26, Maev Kennedy for The Guardian met St John Simpson, archeologist and British Museum curator for the Middle East collections, to be presented with the collections of postcards and thoughts on the future of this particular mean of communication.
Simpson has been putting some postcards into the exhibits to add views of the daily life of the countries involved, correspondence of European travellers. A new way to study history for today's historians, hence the 5000 card boxes the Museum is keeping.
But, the digital age is hard for postcard collectors and researchers: Tehran youth who doesn't know where the post office is, Bahrain shops not stocking postcards, a new generation of academians who never wrote and sent one...
No comments:
Post a Comment