The Bibliophile of Barnet: An Interview with Chris King
An influential multifaceted philatelist
This interview was first published as “The Bibliophile of Barnet: An Interview with Chris King.” Philatelic Literature Review 74 no. 2 whole no. 287 (Fall/Winter 2025).
The interview, originally upwards of 15,000 words, had to be cut down to about 9,500 for print. It is presented here in its full avatar!
In the rarified world of “high philately”, Chris King is probably the first amongst equals. While he made his entry into this space quite late in life (after he was 50), his meteoric rise is really something wondrous, even miraculous. Within a few years, he was vice president and then president of the world’s most prestigious philatelic organization, the Royal Philatelic Society London. Over the last two decades, he has been its most vocal adherent and its most tenacious servant.
Now, having retired from all its posts, he has more time to himself. He is still very busy, philately wise, and logs in the miles (all on personal tab), usually with his wife Birthe, who is another most distinguished philatelist. One is dumbstruck when he talks about his plans for the next one year; most of us will struggle to do as much in five!
While I have never met Chris personally, during the pandemic years I often “saw” him online. His thoughts, his personality, and presence impressed me. Hence, I started pestering him for an interview in September 2022. However, he was quite unwell then. In those months of late-2022 and early-2023, he was frequently in my thoughts. I am relived and happy that he has now overcome his illness.
Chris’ memory is elephantine. I am sure readers will find the detailed reminisces of his life and his philatelic journey since the turn of the millennium, very interesting. Further, he has plenty of thoughts and ideas on philately – it’s past, present, and future – and he easily bridges the gap between old-school and latest trends. Even the most seasoned philatelist will find some novel takeaways here.
Dear Chris, please tell me more about yourself?
I was christened Christopher Miles Bertram King having been born in Reading, the county town of Berkshire, in November 1948, although my parents lived in Newbury, in the same county, 20 miles away.
My parents had met while my father was convalescing in Cheshire after his return home from Burma where he spent the most important part of his service in the Second World War. My mother was the daughter of an electrical fitter who had worked at Vickers Limited, a naval shipbuilder at Barrow in Furness during the First World War, the son of generations of coal miners near Bolton, Lancashire. My father’s family were bakers and confectioners, with his grandfather trading from Ladypool Road, Birmingham before 1900. My grandfather’s business was in Bartholomew Street, Newbury, where he had been very successful, eventually buying Kingsworthy Grange a large house, long demolished, on the outskirts of the town, for his two newly married sons and their families.
With hindsight, I imagine that my mother and her family thought that she had made an advantageous marriage, but my grandfather’s bankruptcy in the early 1950s, must have been a serious shock. We moved to a small property in a much less prosperous part of town - think corrugated iron, no plumbing, and an indoor pump in the kitchen as the water supply.
I remember starting primary school (Figure 1), being carried in my father’s basket on the front of his bicycle in the early 1950s. The same year saw the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, which was attended by excited flag waving crowds, including me standing on the bridge over the River Kennet waving a Union Jack. My recently born sister must have been at home, but I remember only the crowd and the procession.
My grandfather’s second bankruptcy caused us to move to a small village in Hampshire, where we had bought the village shop, to which, over time, were added a car repair and paint spraying business, and a catering enterprise which served both the local Hunt Ball and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament demonstrators at the Falcon Field in Tadley, where they met annually for their march from Aldermaston to Trafalgar Square in London. My father set up his catering van to feed the thousands of Easter protestors. He was never short of ambition and had a prodigious work ethic.
I attended the local village primary school, with more than fifty children in each class, walking to school across the fields in summer. I was the head choir boy in our parish church, and we lived a relatively untroubled life in the country with fields and streams, woodland and the Pamber Forest, frogs, newts and wildlife, dogs, cats, and farmyard animals.
The rich cadences of the King James Bible, the linguistic dexterity of Hymns Ancient and Modern, the mystery of the Collects and the Psalms, for both Matins and Evensong every Sunday, with a Methodist Church Sunday School sandwiched in between gave a regular shape to my later childhood, and an abiding joy in the English language. I was confirmed in Winchester Cathedral in the capital of the Saxon Kingdom of Wessex and have an abiding affection for the traditional liturgy and the continuity that ancient buildings can give to our lives.
My mother was determined to see me attend the grammar school in Basingstoke. She had to leave school at fourteen because her parents couldn’t afford the fees required for her to stay on, despite having passed the entrance exam. She spent many evenings and more hours drilling me for tests during my eleventh year. Consequently, in September 1960, I found myself in the school hall at Queen Mary’s Grammar School for Boys - founded in 1556 by Queen Mary I, Mary Tudor, and wife of King Philip VI of Spain.
At Queen Mary’s, I became a conscientious objector - refusing to join the Combined Cadet Force - this was a military obligation for all boys from about fourteen years onwards, with staff and prefects as officers. I discovered politics, joining the Young Liberals - an exercise in triangulation because my father was a bred in the bone Tory, and my mother was a Socialist, like her mother.
My parent’s marriage had been failing throughout my childhood, and this came to a head while I was at Queen Mary’s with a violent separation, and ultimate divorce. I am more than intolerant of those who blame their lack of success on their family circumstances, although it’s not hard to see why it happens.
I read that you started collecting stamps at a very young age. How did you get into it? A Christmas present, perhaps?
I had a sickly childhood, and my medical records include referrals to various consultants due to my chronic bronchial asthma which affected me as a baby until my early teenage years. I was too ill for sports and outdoor pursuits, and this deficiency was the origin of my first stamp collection.
So, stamps and reading, were the mainstay of my distinctly nonathletic childhood, aided greatly by the local private lending library which my father had bought together with the grocery business. He wasn’t interested in the books which were discarded and left in a conservatory extension to the house, but I was, and I read through this eclectic collection of fiction, non-fiction, and self-help books in a fairly random order. I also read my way through every classroom library at school and eventually was let loose at about the age of nine or ten on the village library, conveniently annexed to the school, and where the Stanley Gibbons stamp catalogues could be found.
It’s hard to recall exactly how and when my affair with stamps began. But I can’t have been much more than five years old when my grandmother sent me stamps cut from envelopes from New Zealand and Canada. I think that these came from her extended family, some of whom had emigrated. Other stamps came from sixpenny and occasionally shilling packets from F. W. Woolworth in Newbury where my mother took me on our visits to her in-laws. I joined the Bridgenorth Stamp Club which sent approval books to, what I imagine having been, a largely teenage membership. The club was incorporated on September 20, 1955, and was finally liquidated at a meeting on February 16, 2009.
My stamp collecting survived my childhood and teenage years (Figure 2). I collected Great Britain and King George VI and had maintained this until my first real girlfriend in 1966 – although I attended the Stanley Gibbons Centenary Exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall in London held February 17-20, 1965; I found myself talking to King Carol of Romania! But then it was 1968, my collection had been sold – one of my many mistakes – and I wouldn’t start again until after I was married in 1970.
What was your professional career like?
Immediately after leaving school, I hitchhiked to Turkey, Syria, and Israel by way of Western Europe. I returned from Haifa to Brindisi by ship and then by road again to Basingstoke. My father organized for me a job as an articled clerk in a firm of accountants called Brooking Holmes & Co.
And then came the Youth Theatre Workshop. I had played small parts in school plays, but the youth theatre was a revelation, beginning before I had left school. With my earlier experience of the voluntary and campaigning organizations, I joined the management, became its treasurer, was involved in acting, production and even improvisation and writing. A little less than two years after beginning accountancy, I ran away to join the theatre. The Institute of Chartered Accountants had no chance - The Central School of Speech and Drama in Swiss Cottage had accepted me. It was a teacher training course, but it was in London, and I was moving away from the country.
Students came from parts of society that I had never previously encountered: urban, middle class, from private schools and privileged families, as well as from the Grammar Schools which had enabled many of the other students to be the first in their families to enter higher education. I met my first out lesbian, my first Black colleagues, my first American, and others. From the perspective of the second quarter of the 21st century, it’s hard to explain how small the world of the county towns and villages of rural England really was almost sixty years ago. It was this shift in opportunity which opened the world to many in my generation, and I remain grateful for the opportunity that I was granted.
Central was hard work. Unlike most universities, it expected attendance every day, and all day. We studied voice, movement, historic dance, theatrical representation, and history of the theatre, as well as educational theory and practice. We went into schools, firstly to observe and later for teaching practice. Productions required rehearsals, set making and design, costumes, all of which had to be researched and created. We worked a normal working day beginning often at nine in the morning, and extending into the evenings, especially for productions and preparation for teaching. Weekends were often spent in catching up on what hadn’t been achieved during the week, and graduates from whichever course at Central left with a real work ethic, and an absolute certainty that what you started needs either to be finished or replaced by something better. I joined the governing body as the student representative for a year, which was my first “official” appointment.
The practical side was training as a teacher of drama. I had teaching placements in Mile End, Somers Town, and North Hackney. Londoners will know these as areas of considerable immigration and poverty. This was working class London of the late 1960s, and I was amazed to discover that teenage children couldn’t read. I talked to my tutors about this, became very interested in the mechanics and theory of learning to read, and what stopped children from doing so. Literacy levels in schools in London were often poor and I wanted to know why.
At the end of my second year, the opportunity to attend an international symposium on theatre was advertised on the internal notice board. This was to be held in Venice, brought with a grant of £50, to be collected on arrival, and was scheduled for September. I applied, with others of my class, and was accepted. Encouraged by the promise of the equivalent of almost £1,000 today’s money, I set off on the train and ferry. I promptly had my passport, tickets, and money stolen on the ferry to Calais. Undeterred, I borrowed money from my Canadian flat mate, arranged for a “Lettre de passe,” replaced my train tickets, and set off from Lille where I had been obliged to leave the train by the ticket inspector. Unfortunately, I was stopped at the Swiss Italian border and had to arrange for a photographic replacement for my passport from the British Consul in Chiasso, Switzerland. Deliberately choosing an express train which didn’t stop at the border, I made my way to Venice arriving only 48 hours later than intended.
Venice also changed my life. There were theatre students from all over Europe including a young woman from the Danish Institute for Theatre Research. Chris Taylor, one of the students from Central had met her, and when I greeted him, he introduced me to Birthe Troelsen. Two weeks later, I left Venice. I had asked her to marry me. She had agreed and we married in London on November 30, 1970 (Figure 3). I met her parents in Denmark at Christmas, and she joined me in London on February 1, 1971, where we soon expecting our first child.
Unsurprisingly, life insisted that I move more urgently. I needed a job, we needed a flat, and we needed an income. By August 1971, I had graduated. We had moved into a housing association property in North Islington. I accepted a job in Hackney in what was then known as the remedial department; this teaching specialism became Special Educational Needs, and more recently SEND or Special Educational Needs and Disabilities.
I had a second job dressing first the boy dancers in Fiddler on the Roof at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Haymarket. Later I dressed the boy dancers in Showboat at the Adelphi Theare in the Strand where I worked through the rehearsals, the opening night on 29 July 1971, and into the run which lasted for 909 performances. I left before this because teaching in Hackney was tough and demanded all the time I could give it. After teaching in Hackney, I moved to a head of department’s job in Southwark, where I became a senior teacher and head of lower school.
I joined the Labour Party in North Islington and was elected to the council at a bye-election in 1975 and remained involved for almost seventeen years. I was chief whip, held posts in planning, and became interested in development including managing the initial decisions to develop what came to be the Business Design Centre Islington. I was also constituency party secretary, chairman of the Trades Council, and served on various bodies including a housing association, a tourism board, an adoption and fostering panel, and an archaeological oversight committee, amongst others.
I was a school governor, and chairman of governors of the Bridge School Islington for almost twenty years. With the help of many skilled and committed professionals, we built the school from a very small enterprise with nineteen pupils to a center of excellence with 160 pupils and a similar number of staff in new purpose-built premises, and no debt. Today the school serves a student population of over 240 and is described as an “Outstanding special school for pupils aged 4-19”. It’s one of my proudest achievements (another is the revision of planning priorities which allowed the development of the Angel Islington).
I stood for Parliament in 1987 and lost. This was wholly expected since my opponent was the secretary of state for education. Two years later, with two colleagues, I founded TimePlan Education Group, the first private sector recruitment business for state schools. This was not well appreciated by some of my political colleagues and a very difficult period followed. Birthe was removed from her job at the Inner London Education Authority and there was a concerted effort to stop me being a candidate for the Labour Party. This had echoes of an earlier disagreement when as a trade union activist, I had opposed the radical policies of the local branch in supporting the staff of William Tyndale Primary School in 1974-1975. I was re-elected on May 3, 1990, but resigned on July 9, 1992.
I had a stress breakdown in November 1989 which lasted until the following April. After some months, I was back at work. The business was beginning to develop successfully, the hours were long, it became necessary to work through the weekends, and to travel overseas to recruit staff (Figure 4). We recruited in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and the United States. There was little time for anything else as most owners of start-up businesses will confirm.
Birthe had retired as TimePlan’s administrator in 2002. I was supposed to retire in 2006 but it took a little longer to arrange for the sale of the business to my partners. Our plan was to retire into philately.
I have been fortunate to have been involved in organizations which have always been instructive and interesting though London Labour politics in the 1980s was a rough game. I feel that I have an understanding of the commercial, voluntary, and public sectors from many perspectives, both in terms of management and direction, and as an employee.
You did come back to stamps after marriage. Did your collecting interests change then?
In the autumn of 1971, or spring of 1972, I confessed to my wife that I had been a stamp collector and that I missed my collection. She said that I should stop complaining or start all over again. By late 1972 I had begun to collect after a six-year gap. I continued with Great Britain but started for the first time on a foreign country, Denmark. Gradually, Britain became less important and the Danish more interesting. I added “dead” countries such as Estonia and Danzig, Lithuania, and Latvia, and then discovered the post-World War One plebiscites, including Schleswig / Slesvig. Defeated by Machins, which never stopped changing, with their different gums and shades and endless values, I gradually came to collect Danish stamps, including the plebiscite, and postal history from the same area. This has sustained me for the past fifty years or more, more so, since gradually Birthe became more and more interested.
Part of my recovery during my stress breakdown of 1989/90 was writing up my stamps, and they were stamps. I spent a lot of time writing up my fine used Great Britain stamps, drawing watermarks, and laying out album pages. This was the first time that I had considered how best to present philatelic material, and it was both therapeutic and enjoyable.
As I recovered, I continued my interest in stamps. I began to write up my Denmark and for the first time I mounted covers on blank pages and wrote them up. The breakdown was an inflection point, since my collecting habits changed from one of accumulation to presentations. Although I was by this time a member of the Scandinavia Philatelic Society (SPS), I remained a private collector pursuing the material for my private enjoyment.
During the 1990s, I carried on buying stamps. I bought in overseas auctions, especially in Denmark where Thomas Høiland had begun his eponymous auction house in 1991. We became very interested in the postal history of the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg and the wars of 1848 and 1864.
We exhibited for the first time at Stamp Show 2000 held from May 22-28 at Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre in London. The exhibit was The Schleswig-Holsten Question. It was in open class and was awarded a large vermeil with 88 points. We had seen that there were no qualification requirements for the open class and jumped from being a rather secret collector to an international medal in one step. In many ways this was just as much Birthe’s exhibit as mine. She had helped with the research, with German and Danish language sources, and it wouldn’t have been without her.
The next thing that happened was Roger Partridge, secretary of the SPS, ringing to inquire if The Schleswig-Holsten Question was my exhibit and if I would like to bring it to present at a society meeting. In this way, I attended my first philatelic society meeting at the age of 52. In the coming years, Birthe and I ran the society packet and attended SPS meetings regularly.
You once said that one of your biggest mistakes was not joining the Royal Philatelic Society London earlier. What made you join the society in 2005?
Eric Keefe FRPSL (1933-2023) was a leading light in SPS. He was also a principal volunteer for the Royal Philatelic Society London’s library and collector of Finland at War.
Eric suggested that I apply to join the Royal the first or second time we met. He spent the next few years persuading me, but I was reluctant since I was still working full time, and I wasn’t sure that I would enjoy being a member of what many considered an elitist body of philatelists. As you know, I am not really a traditional collector, and I didn’t think that I would fit in. Eric convinced me – and Birthe – otherwise, and we were elected to membership on August 15, 2005.
Your rise within the Royal was meteoric. Within eight years, you were its president (2013-15) (Figure 5)! Once, in the early days, someone even said within earshot, “Where the hell did he came from?”
A few years back, someone (a member of the current RPSL council) once said to me that after you became president, things started changing for the better at the Royal. I didn’t know you then but was surprised at the compliment; usually, we hear complaints! What was your secret sauce?
I was interested in how the Royal worked and how things could be improved, especially in terms of administration and organization. I joined the Royal’s council at the annual general meeting on July 3, 2008. I became vice president on June 25, 2009, at the same time as I became chairman of the IT committee (part of what we achieved when I was chairman of the IT committee was to create a strategic plan covering as much of the society as was prepared to be involved).
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the Royal, as it is today, didn’t have a single architect nor engineer. Firstly, I was fortunate that a lot of groundwork had already been done when I became vice president. Secondly, that there was a widespread appetite for change.
The Royal was already changing when I became a member. The extraordinary general meeting held on June 29, 2004, admitted professional philatelists – “the Trade” – to membership of the society by 54 votes to 17, a majority of 76.1%. Christine Earle (1947-2021), John Ray, and others were trying to modernize our IT. We had begun to record our museum artifacts digitally with Geoff Eibl-Kaye’s photographic project. 41 Devonshire Place had been extensively refurbished by early 2007 in a project led by Brian Trotter. Alan Huggins (1936-2025) had begun the process of remounting and archivally storing our philatelic collections in 1994, a process which was continuing.
David Beech, as president 2003-2005, had introduced the idea of forward planning amongst other innovations. Beginning with Gavin Fryer (1938-2024), developing considerably during David Beech’s presidency, and becoming the norm by 2005 in Chris Harman’s presidency, was the introduction of “Drinks and Nibbles” after meetings. Delivering this innovation was the responsibility of successive secretaries, including David Gurney 1999-2002, Keith Fitton 2002-2006, Brian Trotter 2006-2008, and Christine Earle 2008-2013. Prior to this, the president and senior officers retired to the President’s Lounge after meetings and the ordinary members had to make do with the pub and the journey home. This change was gradual but complete after the reallocation of the President’s Lounge as storage during the refurbishment which finished in early 2007. This change alone made the society less hierarchical and made the officers more accessible to the other fellows and members.
Our membership and subscription management had been digitized using a program called Progress in 1997, our accounts were transferred to Sage, and later we began the process of sending out subscription renewals electronically. Even in 2005, this was an entirely mechanical and postal process. We engaged the support of an IT company to assist in managing our systems.
The London Philatelist Archival Edition was created from 2005 with great efforts to achieve this being made by John Wills and Geoff Eibl-Kaye. In 2005 we introduced a software package called Heritage for cataloguing the library holdings. The first paid member of the library staff was appointed in 2002.
Chris Harman, as president 2005-2007, oversaw the centenary of our royal patronage. He had noted at an extraordinary general meeting on October 31, 2000, that, “maybe we do need to look at another building not quite so central, but we should examine that possibility.” The same issue of the London Philatelist which reported this meeting also set up working groups to consider the meeting room, the building at 41 Devonshire Place as a whole, and “electronic technology”. Gavin Fryer was president 2000-2003 and under his Presidency the “2000 and Beyond Appeal” was launched to improve 41 Devonshire Place.
John Sacher (1940-2016), as president 2007-2009, enabled the society to acquire the freehold of 41 Devonshire Place on April 15, 2009. He engaged architects to consider how our premises could be improved, thus building on Gavin Fryer’s initiatives from 2000-2003.
Alan Moorcroft, president 2009-2011, energized our regional meetings, first held at Derby and Bath in 1962-63, and organized the most successful new membership event at London 2010. Brian Trotter, who had served as honorary secretary from 2006-2008, was very engaged in making the administration effective, and as president 2011-2013, in presenting the Royal on the world philatelic stage. As chairman of London 2010, he enabled the first digitization of the Perkins Bacon Records from the profits of the exhibition.
By 2013 the Royal’s membership reached 2,000. The admission of professional philatelists in 2004 contributed to this but the society was also very active in promoting itself through social and philatelic events worldwide. Birthe was chairman of the membership and representatives committee. Together we promoted membership at regional and international events while she encouraged our country representatives to hold meetings of members to promote the Royal.
My other focus during these years was to regularize the Royal’s planning status, which was complicated. In planning terms, parts of the premises were residential, other parts were offices, and we were not in compliance with the approved uses of the building. Between 2005 and 2015, the society took over all the previously residential parts of the buildings, and with support of council gradually regularized the planning uses. There were similar problems with our business rates. Part of the premises was assessed as residential and part commercial for local taxation purposes. Again, these needed to be made compliant; it took ten years to make 41 Devonshire Place fiscally and land use compliant. My previous position as chairman in local government planning was extremely helpful.
Thus, the period beginning around 2000-2010 saw a great deal of change and I was fortunate to join the Royal as this gained momentum. I think that there was a particularly auspicious group of people in senior positions at the time who, in their different ways, were ambitious for the society and largely shared those ambitions.
It’s important to note that the society, vigorously supported by Bill Hedley and Alan Moorcroft, appointed its first professional member of staff in 2012 when Mark Copley became curator of the museum. One year later, we appointed Sarah Loat as our first professional librarian. Accreditation as a museum was achieved on July 24, 2014. Its designation as The Museum of Philatelic History increased pressure to develop public accessibility. The concept of the society being member-led but professionally managed had begun to take root.
There were outside pressures as well with a new Companies Act in 2006 and Charities Acts in 2006 and 2011. These made responsibilities of council members clearer and insisted that the primary responsibility of charities is to achieve their charitable purpose. These duties helped to focus the minds of officers and council members, and to open the society to a wider philatelic and non-philatelic - public. Arts Council accreditation of the museum on July 24, 2014, added external discipline to the management of the museum.
My background in the private and voluntary sectors, politics, and local government enabled me to draw many of these strands of change together, and with the support of an effective council and the spirit of the times, there was a large degree of unity of purpose, and sense of what goals we needed to achieve.
These changes were made evident to the wider membership through a great deal of travel to exhibitions and events around the world, both as vice president and president. Over a six-year period, I was able to speak to many of our members in person. I was able to discuss the society’s aspirations with them. I think that largely enabled the membership to share a common sense of purpose. I introduced a three-times-a-year president’s newsletter to develop a sense of inclusion and belonging. Of course, this would have been impossible without the digitizing the membership records and email. The newsletter had the bonus of cleaning up our email records which were not entirely accurate.
The president has to be an ambassador for the society and a focus for the membership as a whole. Birthe supported me in this, traveling to India, China, USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, many other countries in the Far East, and in Europe. I was able to be a very visible president and I am sure that this was to my advantage. We certainly enjoyed most of it. Perhaps I should make it clear here that there’s no budget for the president of the Royal to travel, and while it’s enjoyable, it can be quite an expensive role to fulfill.
After your two-years as president of the Royal, you have continued to be incredibly involved with the society. You seem to have an enduring love for it. Specifically, what role you played in the move to the new premises on Abchurch Lane?
The presidency of the Royal was effectively a ten-year term, with four years as vice president, two as president, and four more as a past president and membership of the Council. When I ceased to be president in 2015, I had four more years to serve on the council, and naturally most of the work on the building fell to me.
When we first realized that 41 Devonshire Place needed major work, it was partly that the meeting room was too small and the L-shaped configuration made it difficult to use. With 2,000 more members than in 1925, when we acquired our first home, the pressure on the building was growing. At the same time, the age profile of the membership determined that we needed a lift to all floors, and step-free access to the building from the street. The consensus in 2013 was that we should remodel the building.
On 15 August 2014 we submitted a planning application to Westminster Council for a lift covering all floors at 41 Devonshire Place, and a new basement under the cottage. This was only partly successful when it was determined by Westminster Council on 18 June 2015, since they wouldn’t permit a lift to all floors.
Discussions continued throughout 2015 and 2016 as it became increasingly evident that the heating and plumbing systems were in need of replacement, the building was very inefficient in terms of insulation, and costs were rising - and there were more staff and volunteers, and visitors. The final issues were that to do the necessary work, everything would have to be moved out into storage for eighteen months, and the cost of refurbishment, even with the limited consent from Westminster City Council, was priced at over six million pounds.
Eventually on November 9, 2016, the council, under the presidency of Frank Walton RDP FRPSL, concluded that the only way forward was to sell the buildings, and to find somewhere new. I was given responsibility to manage the sale and purchase. Mike Roberts (1954-2024), later the society’s president 2023-2024, had previously been a partner at Gerald Eve, property consultants and chartered surveyors; on his introduction, the firm was appointed to deal with the sale and search for new premises. The sale was not expected to be difficult. Although the initial valuation was disappointing, the sale of 41 Devonshire Place took place on July 7, 2017. The society received a little over ten million pounds for the building. This included a no-cost two-year lease back arrangement to allow the search for new premises to be realized.
The search for new premises took up most of the year. In all, 27 buildings were viewed, some of them several times, another 20 plus sets of building particulars were seen and rejected. In all, I saw 52 potential premises, usually with other members of council.
We were looking in central London, as close as possible to, and preferably within the London Underground Circle Line. Closeness to public transport, especially the Underground was important. Proximity to hotels, entertainment, attractions such as museums, and shops for overseas visitors, and for partners was desirable. Access to as many London mainline railway stations and airports as possible seemed advisable. The building needed to have character, something that the society could be proud of, and a home where members could happily say, “this was a good choice”. Finally, it needed to be a freehold property, without lease or rental issues, and we had to be able to pay for it, ideally without borrowing money.
We saw some very unsuitable buildings, and others that we couldn’t afford, and eventually we were advised that The London Capital Club was available. On a first viewing it was ideal. Other members of council agreed and on October 9, 2017, a formal offer was made for the freehold of 15 Abchurch Lane. Contracts were exchanged on November 28, 2017, and the purchase and lease back to The London Capital Club until July 31, 2018, was signed on December 8, 2017; this was subject to a confidentiality agreement until March 31, 2018.
It’s important to remember that we wouldn’t have been aware of 15 Abchurch Lane without the involvement of Gerald Eve, since it was marketed through a small number of agents directly to their clients. The sale and purchase took a lot of time, and as I had already been centrally involved in dealing with planning and rating matters for much of the previous ten years, by this time, I felt an almost proprietorial involvement in the society’s premises.
Between January 17 and 24, 2018, we interviewed and appointed architects. During the following months we had to decide how the building was best to be modified to accommodate all of our activities, and this meant a lot of consultation with the primary users: the office, the experts (the Expert Committee), the library, museum, and archives. It wasn’t always easy, but I think that most of the membership is content with the result and believes that we have created the best we could, given space and resources.
Finally, on July 9, 2018, we submitted our planning and listed building consent applications to the City of London Planning Department. They approved the application on September 6, 2018. The City was a lot quicker than Westminster and was a lot more interested in helping us achieve what we wanted.
The whole building had to be stripped out; this included all the existing heating, plumbing, and electrical services, as well as large kitchens. Once this had been completed, our contractor took possession of the site on January 3, 2019. We hoped that we could move into the building by June or July that year.
Inevitably there were delays. I had to spend more and more time at the site, and it became, in effect, a full-time job. Dealing with the contractor, the architect, and sub-contractors on site was simply easier than attempting to do this at a distance. The plan to hold the AGM in our new premises was too optimistic, but on Thursday September 12, 2019, by gracious permission of Her Majesty The Queen, the first display at the society’s new home, was material from New South Wales and Western Australia.
Of course, many other Royal members contributed to make the move a success (Figure 7). Notably Peter Cockburn’s fund raising. And all of those who donated, including The British Philatelic Trust and the Spear Charitable Trust. There were those who organized the move including all our staff and volunteers led by Brian Trotter, and Spink, who allowed our staff to use their auction premises in Southampton Row when we ran out of time to complete the building works before our lease expired at Devonshire Place. It really was a team effort involving many hundreds of members of the society, both in London, and in the rest of the world. It was a privilege to head the project, and the official opening by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on November 26, 2019, was a fitting celebration of the culmination of a decade long process (Figure 8).
What was your role as chairman of the Collections Committee?
While the building had long been an issue to be resolved, I also contributed a little to the publications committee, and rather more to the philatelic collections committee. The greatest difference that I was able to make involved the museum and library collections together with the society’s archive. Richard Stock, as president (2019-2021), oversaw a reorganization of the society’s committees. With permanent staff overseeing these activities, the role of honorary librarian had to be reviewed.
For most of its existence, the library, beginning in 1889, had been managed by an officer of the society. With the appointment of professional staff, we needed to emulate most institutional bodies which maintain libraries and allow the professional staff to manage day to day activities, reporting to the society’s council through a committee responsible for overall policy, on the recommendation of the professional librarian. This was quite a significant change and was not easily made. However, it was my responsibility to enable this. It’s now a settled issue and I am proud of the very professional approach of our staff and of the improvements made in recent years. The library is an area of the society’s activities which receives constant praise, and together with the accreditation of the museum, has underlined the value of professional standards and training.
Finally, I have been trying to help the society find its way as a new City of London institution by making links with our common councillors and alderman, with the Candlewick Ward Club, and with other institutions such as the Guildhall Art Gallery, and some of the Livery Companies. After almost a century in the City of Westminster, I hope that the society can build on these new links during what, I hope, will be at least a century in the City of London.
What role did you play in the development of the Global Philatelic Library?
Frank Walton (1955-2022) with Steve Jarvis built a searchable index first for journals and then for books from philatelic libraries world-wide, eventually becoming the Global Philatelic Library in 2012.
Following a discussion with Frank, we concluded that this index could be developed a lot further, and I wrote a paper for a presentation to the Council of Philatelists at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum for a meeting there on June 6, 2011. Frank commented, and we agreed on a final document. The proposal was that The Royal Philatelic Society London and The National Postal Museum at the Smithsonian Institution consider an ongoing partnership to share data, particularly in the sphere of philatelic literature. Alan Holyoake and Bob Odenweller presented the paper (Figure 9) in Washington, but several issues remained to be clarified.
Birthe and I were in New York in July 2011, and we took the Acela Express to see Suzanne Pilsk and her colleagues at the Smithsonian Library in Washington. There’s only one Smithsonian library, even if books are held in the different museum and other institutional collections, and the library as a whole needed to agree with the project. We had a very positive meeting, and on August 8, Tom Lera wrote, “The Smithsonian National Postal Museum accepts the RPSL proposal regarding the sharing of philatelic literature data, as presented to the Council of Philatelists on June 6, 2011.”
With this, we were able to move quickly with Frank writing the work specifications, Steve very actively involved, and a Sheffield based company called Gumshoe Software Ltd., writing the code for the data system. By April what previously had been known as the RPSL Catalogue had been renamed the Global Philatelic Library. The Smithsonian Board of Regents Quarterly Report for Summer 2012 reported the collaboration, and a celebratory dinner took place in Washington at the NPM on December 7, 2012.
How can the GPL be improved? It seems to me that it looks the same as when it was launched in 2016.
There was another launch of the expanded GPL in New York in 2016, but unfortunately since then care and maintenance have been a priority. While there are other libraries which could be added, and digital opportunities have evolved, the company and shareholder structure which was established at that time hasn’t proved effective.
Frank Walton was the energizing force behind the GPL. London 2020, the Covid Pandemic, and his untimely death of cancer in 2022 hasn’t helped. I was very much the “salesman” in setting up the GPL and a gatherer up of consents. But the GPL is desperately in need of a guiding hand and a team to develop its immense potential, especially now that AI large language models could transform searches and reports. I regret that this is an opportunity that is in danger of being lost, and it’s hard to see how the position can be recovered without giving overall responsibility to a single individual reporting to the RPSL council or APRL.
You were the last chairman of the British Philatelic Trust. Most readers do not know about this organization. Please tell us more about it.
The GPL eventually included the British Library’s Crawford Library which had largely been microfilmed during its restoration under David Beech, curator and head of the philatelic collections at the British Library (1983-2013). These microfilms were digitized and made available publicly through funding from The British Philatelic Trust (1981-2014). The trust was created with the surplus funds raised by the Royal Mail for the London 1980 international stamp exhibition. Three miniature sheets were issued which were intended to raise funds for the exhibition but in fact they raised far more than was expected and the excess formed the Trust’s original endowment.
I became the chairman in, I think, 2009. The trust was spending more money on managing itself than it was on its charitable objectives. After a number of discussions and papers, on September 12, 2012 we agreed to close the trust and distribute the funds, seeking the advice of the Charity Commission. In addition to the Crawford Library project (£85,000), which was brokered between David Beech, Frank Walton, and me, other funds were utilized to support the then new Postal Museum in London (about £850,000), the development of the RPSL library, (about £850,000) and the creation of the Philatelic Fund in 2014.
In 2014, you were invited to sign the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists. What were your thoughts when you received the news?
I was surprised. I have written quite a lot of articles but never a book. I have helped organize exhibitions, but I have never been in charge of the whole event. I have presented at many clubs and societies but only became a “public” philatelist in 2000. So, I don’t have the track record of others who have lived a philatelic life. My exhibits have been successful, and achieved large gold medals, but I have never won an FIP Grand Prix, although I was runner up in Lisbon in 2010. What I had and have done is to be a successful public face for the Royal around the world, and where I have been given responsibility, I have certainly worked hard to make philatelic projects successful.
So, I was also grateful to have my achievements recognized, and certainly the ceremony in the Cloth Hall at Ypres, and associated events commemorating the beginning of the First World War on July 28, 1914, was an exceptional event (Figure 10). It was held over four days, with an exhibition of postal material in Het Vleeshuis, The Butchers’ Hall, a special “Last Post” at the Menin Gate, and visits to the battlefields and memorials. It was probably the only occasion when I have been stopped by a stranger in the street and asked for directions to the philatelic exhibition.
Signing with Wolfgang Maassen was particularly poignant since we might have found ourselves in opposing trenches had we been born in the early 1890s rather than the late 1940s.
In March 2021, the Board of Election of the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists added the names of the German Alfred Moschkau (1848-1912) and the Austrian Victor Suppantschitsch (1838-1919) to the Roll as “Fathers of Philately.”
In his interview with me (published in Q3 2021 issue of the Philatelic Literature Review), Wolfgang Maassen said, “It was Chris King who had this idea. Chris is someone who thinks, acts, and lives internationally. He and his amiable wife Birthe have always been aware that it is impossible to make up for the past injustices that people have brought upon people – that one should not forget but preserve, but also that one can reunite and start anew.” High words of praise indeed.
You were the Keeper of the Roll between 2009 and 2015. Did you get this idea then?
I was the Keeper of the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists 2009-2015. This is simply the title given to the secretary of the Board of Election to the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists, who will often serve as the secretary of the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists Trust. It involves looking after the Roll itself, keeping it safe, taking it to events where it might be displayed, and to the signing ceremonies. The Keeper, in consultation with the chairman, the board and the trust, organizes the signing ceremonies and any associated events. He, it has so far always been a man, requests and receives nominations, arranges the paperwork for the board of election, corresponds with those elected to the Roll, prepares for the ceremony, and acts as master of ceremonies at the event.
I have long been aware of the shadow of the First World War on the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists. Brian Birch FRPSL wrote The Fathers of Philately Inscribed on the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists, which was published by RPSL in 2019. This is an excellent study of the philatelic world before the First World War, and an essential book for anybody interested in the history of philately. Brian took from 2013 to 2019 to complete the book, partly because of his depth of research and the availability of so much more material in the digital age. Of the 42 philatelists honored by inclusion in the side panels of the scroll during 1919-1921, none are from the former Axis powers, with the exception of Phillippe la Rénotière von Ferrary, who adopted Austrian citizenship in 1876, after the death of his father. Ferrary was born in Paris with an Italian ancestry. There were no German “Fathers”, and the first German elected to sign the Roll was Dr Herbert Munk (1875-1953) in 1931, who was Jewish and had fled to Switzerland by 1937. In 1932 Heinrich Köhler (1881-1945) signed followed by Dr Franz Kalckhoff (1860-1955) in 1934. Then the Second World War intervened, leaving Karl Wolter (1905-1988) as the next German to sign the Roll in 1976.
This was pointed out to me by Wolfgang Bauer at a meeting of the Berliner Philatelisten-Klub von 1888 eV to celebrate its 125th anniversary in February 2013. I checked the records, and it seemed to me that however strong the feelings were in 1920 and 1945, enough time had passed to recognize the contribution of early German philatelists to the foundations of philately. However, there was no great appetite to add to the “Fathers” on the Board of Election at the time.
Despite this, I had asked Wolfgang Maassen, who might be considered as a German “Father” of philately, and he came up with a list of potential names by April 2016. I was no longer the Keeper of the Roll, but I had become a member of the Board of Election, and Jon Aitchison had replaced me as Keeper. I am not sure when Jon raised the issue but at the meeting of the Board of Election held on March 5, 2020, I was “tasked to research suitable candidates to be considered by the Board of Election in 2021”. The principle was agreed by the trust on January 14, 2021. I asked Wolfgang Maassen to consult with other leading German philatelists to come up with a ranked list of four candidates and supply short biographies for each in English for the Board of Election meeting on March 4, 2021. This was done, and the meeting agreed to add Otto Carl Alfred Moschkau (1848–1912) of Germany and Victor Suppantschitsch (1838–1919), an Austrian born in what is today Slovenia, to the “Fathers”, and these additions were displayed at the signing ceremony in Harrogate on September 24, 2021.
I think that I had the original idea, prompted by Wolfgang Bauer, and certainly the groundwork was done by Wolfgang Maassen, but it needed the consent of the Board of Election and the RDP Trust. I am very happy with the result.
How can access to the RPSL archives made easier? How can the archives contain more information in them? Digitizing is an expensive task and the Royal is moving in this direction. What are your thoughts?
Firstly, the move to Abchurch Lane has immensely improved physical access. Not just in the way in which the material is stored and the temperature and humidity control, but in terms of the physical storage. Access is much more closely controlled. Then we have level access to the building and to six of the seven floors, and there’s level access from the Northern Line Bank station on the London Underground, almost to our front door.
There is the ongoing work which is unseen but important. Maintaining, improving, and correcting our catalogue entries makes it easier to find what we have, which means that there’s greater trust and confidence in the archive having an accurate record of what it holds. Add to this the professionalism of our staff, which gives donors confidence in our capacity to hold and maintain their gifts. Nowhere is this more evident than in the significant number of donations of club and society records.
All this work is ongoing, daily, and adds to the quality and value of what we hold in trust for the philatelic and general public. The traditional, painstaking work of any successful archive is bread and butter to the Royal’s archival work, although we can always find more to do.
One needs to be clear about what is meant by the RPSL archives. In addition to the library, the Royal has other printed materials. Obviously, we have auction catalogues and other commercial material, but we also have exhibition catalogues, both national and international, and congress and other records of philatelic events.
We have the society’s own records, almost back to the foundation in 1869, but we also have records of many other philatelic societies, often donated when that society has ceased to exist. We actively encourage societies to give us their records because they are vulnerable to changes in secretaries, moving house, and death. Parts of the philatelic collections have been scanned, but there’s a lot further to go, and this is also true of our forgery collections. In both cases the work is done by volunteers.
We have had the records of the Expert Committee professionally scanned, although more needs to be done to digitize the Expert Committee’s photographic collection. And then there are the Perkins Bacon Records, which have also been professionally scanned, thanks to a grant from the Spear Charitable Trust. Finally, we have a lot of material which was born digital ranking from displays to monographs and catalogues.
The Royal has done remarkably well in digitizing its philatelic assets but now faces a critical challenge. How are we going to make these records available for research? Clearly there must be a common system with common agreement on what metadata is required to make retrieval effective, and an effective means for researchers to gain access. The RPSL catalogue and GPL have some clever software behind them, but they are not always easy to use and often provide more information than can be easily digested.
At present there’s no such agreement for all of the Royal’s digital records, and it’s a question which the officers and staff of the society have urgently to address. I am no longer a member of council, nor am I an officer, so my influence is limited. However, I have made it clear what I think in principle should be done, but it’s a matter for others.
The problem is that it’s difficult to know what to do for the best since data management is undergoing a radical change. Data strategy, architecture, and governance are relatively straightforward and rely on well-known established principles. But changes in handling metadata and AI in just the past two or three years have made any decision harder. The opportunities are great, but the solution is unclear, and it will need a guiding hand, with significant financial and human resources. It’s a decision which needs to be addressed very soon, and it will have far reaching ramifications if no decision, or a piecemeal decision is made.
One of the major assets that the RPSL possesses is the records of Perkins Bacons, the printers of the Penny Black. The Royal purchased the records of company in the 1930s, when the firm collapsed. Tell us more about this archive and your role in the digitizing process.
The Royal has most of the Perkins Bacon Records, which came to the Society following the company’s liquidation in 1935, through Charles and Harry Nissen, and Thomas Allen, who donated them to the RPSL. The society also bought some additional material later. The archive comprises 208 bound volumes and 143 files of loose papers, all of which have now been digitized with support from the Spear Charitable Trust. Conservation is also funded and will continue for some years.
I started the digitization process in 2010-2011 with support from the surplus made by the London 2010 international stamp exhibition. Grant funding from the Association of Independent Museums, TownsWeb Archiving, National Manuscripts Conservation Trust, and The Pilgrim Trust, as well as individual donations and bequests, enabled more digitization and conservation work to be done. Additionally, a successful collaboration with The Arts Society has enabled the engraving books to be made available online.
The huge step forward is that the entire archive is now digitized, following a successful grant application in 2024 by Nicola Davies, our Head of Collections. Max Communications, the company that did the digitizing work, delivered the images in June 2024.
It’s important to remember that the records hold importance not only for philatelists but also for numismatists, scripophilists, historians, and collectors of revenue stamps and paper. They offer a commercial record of a thriving business, including wages, working hours, material costs, and pricing. So, the potential audience is much larger than just philately, and we have to accommodate and advertise that fact, in support of our charitable objectives.
The society intends to conserve, digitize, index, and publish the entire archive on its website, making it freely accessible to anyone who is interested, and to hold an event before the end of 2026 to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Perkins Bacon archives at the RPSL.
That’s the easy part, and the challenge now is to deal with metadata, access and retrieval, the same challenge which we have with our other digitized records.
Over the years you have received many awards. While I can list them, I would like you to tell us about some of your major ones.
In 2014, I was awarded the Professor Dr. Hans A. Weidlich-Plakette. It is awarded once a year by the DASV (Deutscher Altbriefsammler-Verein or German Association of Old Letter Collectors) to individuals who, following the example of the long-standing DASV president and honorary president Prof. Dr Hans A. Weidlich, have rendered outstanding services to philately as leaders in the field or through outstanding research results in the field of postal history or through its effective and comprehensive promotion.
In 2014, I was invited to sign the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists.
I received the 114th Deutsche Philatelistentag medal in 2015. It is a recognition for achievements in philately.
The Bacon Medal of the Royal Philatelic Society London in 2018; it is awarded to Honorary Fellows of RPSL.
The L’Académie européenne de philatélie European Parliamentary Medal for Philately in 2018; the Lichtenstein Award of The Collectors Club of New York in 2019; and the Federation of European Philatelic Associations Medal for Exceptional Service to Organised Philately in 2019 were all awarded for my service and contributions to philately.
In 2024, Birthe and I received the Kjøbenhavns Philatelist Klub (KPK) medal established on November 22, 1927. The purpose of establishing the medal was to create a visible symbol of the club’s gratitude and recognition of achievements in the field of philately and also to encourage further efforts in this regard (Figure 9).
In 2025, I was awarded the Smithsonian Philatelic Achievement Award to honor and celebrate living individuals for outstanding lifetime achievement in the field of philately, and Honorary Membership of the Scandinavian Collectors Club – with Birthe.
Which awards are your favorites, by the way?
It’s a bit unfair on the organizations that have made the awards to choose one above the others. The Bacon Medal is awarded to Honorary Fellows of the Royal Philatelic Society London, and I, generously supported by Patrick Maselis, helped to bring it into existence in 2014. Twelve have been awarded to Honorary Fellows, in recognition of their having made the highest contribution to the Royal. I am very proud of mine, as I am of all the others. In some ways the most emotionally charged was the KPK medal (Figure 11) which we had not expected and was awarded without warning at a large exhibition dinner.
I don’t know much about the world of FIP and FEPA and others. I do read that all of them need urgent reorganization since they do not contribute to the world of philately much apart from organizing stamp exhibitions. What do you think?
That’s not entirely fair. I think that the vast majority of those working in international philately work hard.
FIP is the Fédération Internationale de Philatélie, a world-wide body created in 1926 with objectives to, “promote stamp collecting and philately, maintain friendly relations and friendship among all peoples, establish and maintain close relations with the philatelic trade and postal administrations, and to promote philatelic exhibitions by granting Patronage and Recognition”. It does the last of these well, but seems not to address the other objectives with equal enthusiasm. I pointed this out when I ran unsuccessfully for president of the FIP in 2018, and beginning in 2018 regional exhibitions have been supported through the FIP Sponsorship scheme, which is an innovation with considerable potential.
It may be that a board of seven members with a single employee can’t practically achieve all that is required, but there are many philatelic organizations in the world, and the FIP could coordinate other promotional projects.
Unlike FEPA, and I have too little direct experience of FIAP (the Asian counterpart) to comment, the FIP still operates on a pyramidic model, with the board at the top, and the national and continental federations below, relying on each of these to reach out to their members locally. It’s an analogue model in a digital world.
In my opinion, the FIP should be promoting philately as well as exhibitions. I am sure it’s not straightforward, but I think that there’s more to be done. APS has an extensive range of educational programs, and there are lessons to be learned from these. As I said earlier, perhaps the human resources are not easily available, but the FIP is quite well off financially, and could consider using resources for promotional work. Three board members have responsibility for public relations, YouTube, or the website, and I know that each of them has personal talents to bring to these.
You won a bronze for your second competitive exhibit in Copenhagen in 2001. From them you climbed the ranks and now have many gold and large gold medals in your closet. Do you think the current way of stamp shows and dealer booths and exhibiting has a future?
I think that there are problems with the future of philatelic exhibitions. These used universally to be funded by postal administrations, which were in the past generally sound commercial enterprises with resources to pay for promotional exhibitions.
The number of postal administrations which are prepared to support exhibitions is in steep decline, especially in western Europe, but also elsewhere. Some postal administrations are fully privatized as in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Portugal, others are government owned companies such as in France, and some are government departments as in India and the United States. The United States Postal Service lost almost $9.5 billion in 2023-2024.
Denmark, for example, has abolished the Universal Service Obligation, and letter mail has dropped by 90% since 2000. No other country has yet followed, but Iceland Post (almost) stopped producing new postage stamps at the end of 2020. I think that this might be a slowly growing trend.
So, new issues are eventually going to be a thing of the past. This doesn’t matter because so many postage stamps have been produced since 1840, and so many folded letters, envelopes and postcards have survived that there’s never going to be shortage of material.
The one thing of which I am certain is that collecting is not going to die. People have said to me that we need to encourage children to collect stamps otherwise we have no future. I have no problem with this sentiment, but I doubt that it’s the most important consideration.
I have never met a childhood collector of Georgian silver, Delft pottery or Victorian watercolors. Neither are they interested in genealogy or family history. Collecting often comes to people as they get older, as does an interest in local history or historic buildings. We need to ensure that our collecting sphere is well advertised and marketed.
Exhibitions and fairs are certainly on way of doing this. They will continue though we may see mixed events where we work with postcard, banknote, and other collectors. Funding will change and the trade and collectors themselves may have to contribute more to the costs. An eight-frame exhibit costs about £1,000 to enter internationally, and then there’s travel and accommodation. So, this end of the market is likely only to get more expensive unless costs can be shared. It’s little wonder that many collectors are happy to show their material at local or regional level, and at specialist societies.
We may see more regional exhibitions. There are good examples in Europe with Nordia, Balkanphila, and Alpe Adria. Destinations may change, with London, Paris, Berlin giving way to secondary locations, or destination cities with more to interest the visitor than just a philatelic exhibition. Annual events may become biannual, or less frequent. Although the British decennial exhibition will take place in 2030, the question is where?
Some dealers have discovered that their online business grew during Covid, and they have reduced their attendance at fairs. In my opinion, traders and especially auction houses, need to meet their customers face to face. Both for reasons of confidence and to build and maintain relationships. I want to know who I am dealing with and probably won’t consign material to an auction house whose principals I have never met. But that might be a generational feeling, and I think this is also true of millennials, but have no idea what Gen Z will think in the long run.
Local fairs seem to continue, and you can see this with other collectibles such as postcards.
One last thing is the influence of geopolitics – the world is more uncertain today than at any time since the 1960s, and in some ways more febrile since the 1930s. If this continues, all bets are off. There weren’t many international exhibitions between 1939 and 1945.
The inevitable question – What’s your take on the future of the hobby?
The problem is in attracting new collectors. Philatelists and postal historians are very good at talking to each other, but it’s not a very good way of developing an interest amongst others.
Michael Cortese and Charles Epting, the Punk Philatelist, Graham Beck, and others have made podcasts and YouTube presentations aimed at a wider audience, some of which have attracted good audiences. Graham Beck’s YouTube Tour of the Royal Philatelic Society is heading for 20,000 views, which is significant in philatelic social media.
FEPA has closed its printed journal and is now entirely online but is reaching a wider audience over the heads of philatelic clubs and societies. The FEPA Newsletter, Facebook pages, and website are integrated and one of the most reliable sources of current information on exhibitions. Organized philately has, in many cases, been slow to evolve, but there are also exceptions, such as the Great Britain Philatelic Society which has some of the best online philatelic research resources. The American Philatelic Society, the American Philatelic Research Library, and others are also well represented digitally, but I think that the FIP could do more to promote philately, and not all collectors are members of clubs and in touch with organized philately.
Bill Hedley, the President of the Federation of European Philatelic Associations (FEPA), with others such as Bruno Crevato Selvaggi and Claudio Manzati, have been pressing the case for postal history to be seen in an historical and academic research context. Richard Morel at the British Library has produced a series of lectures and articles demonstrating that philately has a place in art history and cultural studies, while others have been looking at the commercial and economic impact of postal services, although these are more likely to be historians and economists, rather than postal historians who concentrate on postal reforms and the evolution of postal systems.
We need to find ways of reaching out to other parts of the collecting world, and to promote articles in journals beyond the philatelic pale.
Some of the more thoughtful and progressive auction houses recognize this and collectively they probably have better and larger collector databases than can be found in organized clubs and societies at every level. Working with the trade is an essential part of building our market.
I know your Schleswig collection was published in the Edition d’Or series by the Global Philatelic Network (Figure 12). How did you start collecting this area? What are your other collecting interests?
As a child I started collecting the whole world. By the time I was an early teenager I had settled on the stamps of Great Britain, which lasted until I stopped at the age of about sixteen. When I started again, I returned to Great Britain. I had missed the introduction of Machins in 1967, so I started with the then relatively new decimal Machins, working back to the sterling issue and then the Wildings. I also started collecting Danish stamps because then, as now, stamps are a good introduction to national history, geography, culture and traditions.
Eventually, and as I mentioned before, the Machins all became too much! I started looking for a new collecting area, and discovered “dead” European countries: Estonia, Latvia, etc. From here it was a short step to finding the post Versailles plebiscite stamps, and then a gathering interest in the Schleswig Plebiscite of 1920. This was the genesis of my Large Gold medals for Denmark, Schleswig and Holstein: Invasion, Occupation and Postal Change and Schleswig: from Danish Duchy to Prussian Province – early mail to 1867, which was awarded a Grand Prix at ANTVERPIA 2010, a FEPA exhibition held at Antwerp. The third of the Schleswig exhibits, From Prussia to Plebiscite: The Duchy of Schleswig 1868-1920 was awarded a number of Gold medals, but I could never find a way to make the next level.
I really like illustrated envelopes, especially from the social justice campaigns of the mid-nineteenth century, and this includes related material. I showed Peace through the Post in the Toronto one frame exhibition Capex 22, and it was awarded a gold medal. There are illustrated letterheads from the Schleswig wars, which I also collect, but I haven’t exhibited these since 2005. The telephone kiosk local posts of Copenhagen are very interesting, and include stamps and telegrams, together with contemporary postcards, which I like very much. I also have collections of Denmark in the First World War, and Denmark in the Second World War, parts of both have been exhibited, both with gold medals, and the latter as a joint exhibit with Birthe.
Then there’s Denmark and the Napoleonic Wars and the Posts in the City of Lübeck, two other collections with associated Large Gold exhibits. Over the past few years, I have been turning an extensive collection of mail to and from Denmark before the UPU into an exhibit titled Anglo-Danish Mail c.1800-1875, which was awarded a large gold medal at Europhilex in 2025, but there’s a lot more of this material, not only to and from Denmark, but other northern and eastern European destinations and origins.
I am interested in the social, political and economic reasons for the creation and routing of the postal services – the advent of steam ships and trains, and their impact on speed and price of delivery. So, there’s a lot of material which is simply part of a collection, although it does get displayed at clubs and societies from time to time.
There’s an accumulation of stamp dealer and exhibition related material, which has very occasionally been displayed, and at present it’s not more than a work in progress. But the history of collecting and philately in general is fascinating.
There are a lot of postcards. We have “Gruss Aus” cards from Denmark and northern Germany, which we have made into a postcard exhibit, My Dearest Mama – Travels with my Aunt, which may find its way to Boston. A collection of political cards from between 1900 and 1916 from Great Britain which are gradually being sorted out, as well as a small nineteenth century postal history of Islington, again with a lot of postcards from the golden age of postcard collecting.
And to all of this needs to be added an accumulation of Danish revenue material, a box of Sunday letters, a great deal of mail with Danish instructional labels, maps from all periods, largely related to Denmark, postal documents and notes, associated ephemera, philatelic medals, stamps and postal history on pottery and porcelain, trade cards, railway, charity and propaganda, stamps, and two grown up children, who are wondering what they will do with it all! And then, of course, there’s Birthe’s material.
I know you have a philatelic library. Is it a working library to help you with your postal history collection?
I have a lot of books (Figures 13a and 13b) and mostly they have been bought to help us with our collections and exhibits. So, yes, it’s a working library and it includes a lot of background books on the history and geography of places and periods that we collect.
I collect literature. I love the very early catalogues of Booty, Gray, Laplante, and Baillieu. And the first journals including La Magasin Pittoresque, and Der Bazar, Illustrirte Damen-Zeitung which were not aimed at a philatelic audience but included articles on stamps. I also collect exhibition catalogues and maps showing postal routes, as well as the nineteenth century publications of the Philatelic Society London.
Almanacs and trade publications in the 19th century often included information on postal rates and routes, and some early office guides tell you how long it would take to send a letter to a particular destination. If I can find these, I am very happy to add them to the collection.
It’s an eclectic collection rather than a library. You can find titles such as Experiences of War and Nationality in Denmark and Norway, 1807-1815 next to David Cornelius’ British FPOs in Scandinavia 1940-47, and Norbert Kannapin’s Die Deutsche Feldpostübersicht 1939-1945 with Wright and Creeke’s The Adhesive Stamps of the British Isles.
I would rather have the books at home and near to hand than have to wait to go to a library, and this is true of journals as well. I have runs of most of the essential Danish journals, although these are also now online on the websites of the clubs that produce them. I also like to have journals in digital form, because they are so much easier to search using key words.
Where I have found digitized dictionaries – German-English or Danish-English – technical dictionaries, postal laws, and other specialist reference publications, I have downloaded them, which means that I also have a large digital library. I worry a little about what will happen to this collection, partly because I don’t know who else would like to have a Danish-English Dictionary from 1897. It’s really helpful for the exact translation of technical terms which have disappeared in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. Or my scans of the postal laws of Schleswig-Holstein up to 1868, which are images because the typescript is gothic and they can’t be searched.
You have a big non-philatelic library as well. Tell us more about it, especially the cartoon books!
The non-philatelic library is mainly novels and reference works, poetry and playscripts, history, natural history, and gardening. Then there are Birthe’s Danish books which, in addition to novels and cookery, include a lot of reference material from the Second World War, and literature from that time including biographies and autobiographies. And yes, I have a lot of cartoons, largely political from the earliest work of William Hogarth and James Gillray to Gerald Scarfe, Steve Bell and Matt (Matthew Pritchett), whose Daily Telegraph cartoons are the best thing about the newspaper. I really don’t know how many of anything we have, but the cartoon books are only about four linear meters.
You are one of few people who are interested in the history of philately. What sparked this?
I have always been interested in history. Even as a young teenager I could never pass a second-hand or junk shop nor a bookshop, and I just enjoyed being able to browse through the stock. I still have postcards from the First World War, which I bought for pennies in Newbury as a 12 or 13 year old boy in the early 1960s. So, it’s in my nature to collect the survivors of the past.
You don’t get collections without collectors, and all collectors have a history. It was partly due to my curiosity about the people who created the Philatelic Society London when I first became involved, and then my discovery of the early magazines like Stamp Collector’s Magazine, The Philatelist, The Philatelic Record, and The PJGB all of which have articles about collectors, and sometimes photographs or engravings, so I started to collect philatelists and their images. It’s not far from there to find the history of philatelic organizations interesting, which led directly to my research of the 22 places where the Royal Philatelic Society has held meetings, together with the other places where dinners have been held.
A long time ago I asked myself what was the first philatelic publication, and I set out to find out by going through the early journals, only to discover that P.J. Anderson had asked himself the same question almost a century earlier which led me to his wonderful book Early English Philatelic Literature, 1862-1865, written with B.T.K. Smith, and published by the Philatelic Literature Society in 1912.
The other revelation was the material which is held in the Royal’s museum and archives. It is extensive and significant and still needs a great deal of research. As chairman of the collections committee, I felt an enormous responsibility for this material. Many clubs and societies have lost their history, and even the records of the Royal are incomplete. The Royal is collecting philatelic society records, and this element of our philatelic history collection continues to grow.
I am not as methodical or meticulous as Brian Birch, but I remain enthusiastic to discover where philately came from, as much as I am curious about where it’s going.
How do we get more people interested in the history of philately? Is it something that comes from within or can it be developed?
I think that we should try harder to get postal history and the history of communications out of the philatelic society and into the mainstream. There’s a respectable body of academic work in these areas, and we should try to make friends in the institutions where this is being researched. However, that doesn’t help with the history of philately.
In truth I suspect that it’s always likely to be a niche study. I can’t see a Wolfgang Maassen’s The Mysterious Philippe de Ferrari being made into a block buster movie. History books, films, TV dramas and documentaries remain popular in society as a whole, but undergraduate numbers, at least in the UK, are in decline.
All we can do in practical terms is to keep researching and retelling the stories of our history. I very much enjoyed writing John Walter Scott: The Father of American Philately recently. It attracted a lot of interest and was republished in The United States Specialist, after appearing in The London Philatelist.
It’s more than 10 years since we showed material relating to 19th century dealers at the Royal, with Edward Caesley, Charles Kiddle, Francis Kiddle, Wolfgang Maassen, Vincent Schouberechts, and myself. It was a popular display. There’s a lot more to do on the history of the trade.
I would like to see more of the history of philately in philatelic journals as well as club, society, and exhibition presentations. In some cases, it’s very difficult to track down the founders of philately. Trying to find out about William Dudley Atlee, William Edwin Hayns, and Paul George Frederick Furse, respectively the first three honorary secretaries of the Royal is hard. Our own records are thin, and while Ancestry is of some help, it’s a problem to discover more than just the bare biographical data. It’s not helped by Furse causing our first minute book to disappear from philately forever when he was posted to West Africa during the Third Anglo-Ashanti war.
Ron Negus in the British Philatelic Bulletin and The London Philatelist wrote some excellent pen portraits of historical and current philatelists. Brian Birch continues to add to his vital reference works on the subject. Wolfgang Maassen’s Stakhanovite efforts to record the philatelic history of Germany continue.
Studying past philatelists thematically might be an approach. While Adelaide Lucy Fenton is celebrated as an early female philatelist and philatelic journalist, Mrs. Charlotte Tebay, one of the saviors of the early Philatelic Society London, is barely remembered. Biographies of early female philatelists would be a great project; there were not that many in organized philately. Google jumps directly from Charlotte Tebay, who died in 1901, to Louise Boyd Dale, who was born in 1913.
Then there are clubs and societies which sometimes have recorded their history, but on too many occasions, it’s been lost. There’s a lot of work to be done in this area and even more in the history of national and regional federations.
It seems that many of the founding members of the Philatelic Society, London were Freemasons, and there’s an interesting piece of research to do here.
And of course there’s you Abhishek, and your articles which contribute to our recorded history. We need to cajole editors of philatelic journals to include at least one piece on philatelic history in every issue. But then we have to find the writers, and researchers.
You are your wife, Birthe, make a formidable philatelic pair and have inspired other husband-wife pairs. She signed the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists recently in 2025. Did you get her interested in philately?
I think it’s other couples who have inspired us. I think of Renate and Christian Springer, Kersti and Bertil Larsson, both sadly deceased, Pat and Dan Walker, James and Pat Grimwood-Taylor, and others who came before, including Ad Indhusophon, whose husband Prakaipet (Pet) we never met. There are many others including Richard and Yvonne Wheatley who were the first to sign the “Double Geneva” membership book.
Birthe wasn’t a collector when we first met. When I returned to stamp collecting, I often asked her for help in identifying stamp printings or design details, and she wasn’t much interested. However, when I started to collect postal history, and I asked for help in reading the contents of letters, her interest grew. Birthe is patience personified, and she taught herself to read gothic handwriting, both German and Danish. The turning point was a correspondence between a newly married husband and wife, he was at the front looking after the officers’ horses, and she was at home looking after the shop. We still have these letters and she transcribed all 22 of them, written between February and August 1864, to and from Ana Kathrine and Hans Petersen. She found this insight into the lives of a young couple divided by war, and expecting a baby, fascinating. In fact, she has transcribed more than 200 letters from this war, and many others from different periods in Danish history. I think that the truth is that she enjoys the people, the history, and social history, just as much as the philately.
After the Hafnia exhibition in 2001, and our children having more or less left home, she retired from work in 2002, and for the first time in her life had time. The Hafnia exhibit, The Soldier, his Wife, the Mill and the Baby, was based on the letters. It was in the Open Class, addressing the given theme of communication, and we thought it was perfect. However, the judges disagreed, and we left Copenhagen with Birthe determined to continue with open philately. Hurt, I retired to postal history.
What is the Double Geneva Club and its pin?
We invented the Double Geneva Club in 2016, following a casual discussion with Stephanie and Charles Bromser as an antidote to organized philately. There are no rules, no meetings, no subscription, and the only qualification for joining is that you must be a collecting couple. We had a pin made (Figure 14); the obvious model was the Double Geneva stamp of September 30, 1843. The first pins were given out in the run up to New York 2016. We expect to bring the book and a supply of pins to Boston 2026. So, if you think you qualify, let us know in advance.
Recently, the Philatelic Literature Review became a bi-annual publication from a quarterly one. A development of much sorrow to me. What are your thoughts on this in particular and on the future of print in general?
I am not happy about it but we must be realistic. I think print has problems in the medium term. It’s not just the price of paper which is increasing. Energy prices and shipping costs have contributed to the increase and these don’t look like reducing soon. Add the steep reduction in letter volumes, and the consequence is an increase in parcel rates. So, there’s a very real pressure on prices of books and magazines sent through the post.
Philatelic print volumes are comparatively low and small runs do not allow for printing in dispersed print shops. The scope for cutting costs is small and this means that either publishers of journals will have to increase prices or reduce frequency.
I think it’s inevitable that more philatelic journals will go online. One of my worries is that we will lose the historic record. I think that libraries receiving digital journals should have them printed and bound, but I can’t see the end of printed books any time soon.
I may be wrong in assuming that you are one of the instigators of the Crawford Festival held by the Royal in June every year. How did this come about?
I think that the Royal should have a secondary program which is not dependent on the president’s guest list.
With an accredited museum, a rich archive in the form of the Perkins Bacon records, a significant collection of philatelic history including exhibitions, medals, cinderella material, an extensive archive including that of philatelic societies which have closed, and a very fine philatelic library, we need to promote our collections, and to build our audience. Ideally beyond philatelists, but to include other collectors.
There have been a series of Sir Daniel Cooper Lectures, at least going back to the early 1990s when Franceska Rapkin FRPSL, gave a lecture describing The First Two Shield Issues of the German Empire of 1872. The subject has always been on material that Sir Daniel Cooper may have collected himself. We tried to reintroduce these on a regular basis. In 2010, we had Thomas Mathà presenting International Mail crossing the Italian Peninsula 1815-1852. In 2012, Alan Huggins gave us Stamps with Large Margins and in 2014, Bob Galland gave us The First Low Value Surface Printed Postage Stamps of Great Britain.
In October 2013, we introduced the Crawford Seminars. The first was on Perkins Bacon Conservation and the second in 2014 was on Philatelic Conservation. We have also tried to run after work presentations at Abchurch Lane on subjects of general interest to collectors.
One of the problems with the Royal is maintaining continuity between presidents and secretaries and their different priorities in terms of their programs and administration. The appointment of a head of collections and a collections committee allowed us to develop the Crawford Seminars. Four, starting in 2022, have now been held successfully, incorporating the presentation of the Crawford Medal from a shortlist selected earlier.
I hope that this can continue, but it depends on the support of the society and the preparedness of volunteers to contribute papers and organization. I am very positive about this.
How did Covid-19 change the philatelic world? Is it for the better or worse? One thing for the better, according to me, is that RPSL presentations are now a combination of physical and virtual which allows people from all over the world to participate.
Very much for the worst. Like many institutions it’s been hard to get back to the numbers of people attending events in person. Numbers are very slowly increasing, but we are more than three years away from February 24, 2022, when restrictions in the United Kingdom were lifted.
Yes, the Zoom meetings, online exhibitions, and lectures are a step forward for those who find travelling difficult, and they certainly allow the Royal and other organizations to serve their international memberships better, and I am certain that this will continue.
But I think that we lacked impetus, and for a while confidence. Time will tell, but I think that we are a long way from where we might have been without Covid-19, particularly in terms of membership and attendance in person. Our demography hasn’t helped, but I think that we will need to work hard to simply maintain what we have. Which is why we need to reach out to build a wider audience.
Over the years, you would have made plenty of friends in philately. Would you like to tell us of your best friendships?
One of the great things about philately is that it’s worldwide. There are many in Scandinavia whom we would count as friends, and in many other counties, especially in Germany and the USA. But good friends? I have always had a wide acquaintance but a limited group of close friends. In philately I miss Frank Walton more than anyone (Figure 15). We spoke at least three times a week, and we were fizzing with ideas and plans. My other friends know who they are, and I wouldn’t be without them.
You are only 76, a middle-aged philatelist! What are your future philatelic plans?
Oesophageal cancer in 2022/23 was a life shaking experience. My intimations of immortality have become a close encounter with mortality, and I know that life is limited. I have regular CT scans and the next is three months away. At best, I have three-month leases on life; with luck they might become six monthly.
We will be in Copenhagen in three weeks’ time (early September) to present a five-frame postcard exhibit which we have made together. This is My Dearest Mama – Travels with my Aunt, a travelogue through early twentieth century Copenhagen and North Schleswig with a fictional family, which we have created for the event. This is entered in the British National exhibition at RPSL in September.
In September, we have a visit from the ladies of the City of London, and I will give them a guided tour of 15 Abchurch Lane.
There’s another postcard exhibit which I would like to make in the coming year, which studies the politics of Edwardian Great Britain, 1900-1914. This is Trouble with Tariffs; it charts the political arguments, social questions, and reforms in the years following Joseph Chamberlain’s campaign to introduce tariffs preferring Empire goods to foreign trade.
I have an exhibit at Nordia in September, Anglo-Danish Mail c.1800-1875. This is the story of the letter mail to and from Denmark and Great Britain and demonstrates falling rates and increasing speed due to technological change.
In November, we are in Wiesbaden for the Heinrich Köhler & AIJP Summit on Philatelic Literature, and sale of Tomas Bjäringer’s PARIS Library of Philatelic Literature. I will be presenting on the subject What is Philatelic Literature?
At the end of November, I have a Zoom presentation of Danish Instructional Labels for The Auxiliary Markings Club. On January 29, 2026, I will display Denmark, the United Kingdom and Mail across the North Sea at the Royal. Later, also at the Royal, I will show one frame of Département Conquis, Nombre 128, Les Bouches de l’Elbe 1811-1814 as part of the Society of Postal Historians 75th anniversary.
We will be in Dubai for the International exhibition in February 2026 and will exhibit our Denmark and the Second World War 1939-1949 – Domestic and Overseas Mail. In March it’s the annual weekend meeting of the Scandinavia Philatelic Society where I will give the presidential display.
We intend to be in Boston for the international exhibition in May and for the presentation of the Smithsonian Philatelic Achievement Award. In the meanwhile, I am still trying to pull together the written record in the form of congress reports for the FIP. These are very elusive, but I need them to try to write even an outline history of the FIP for its centenary. This has proved much more difficult than I expected.
Then in June, it’s the Crawford Festival and the FIP Congress in Macao. In between January and June, we have six local club and society displays in England and Wales that we have promised.
Finally, I have promised the donor to keep an eye on the Perkins Bacon archive to ensure that it is made publicly available.
I really have no time to be unwell, as we have a busy 12 months ahead, as ever.
Acknowledgements: To Chris, of course, for spending so much time on answering my questions. Feedback can be sent to my email address: abbh [at] hotmail.com.
Thank you, Abhishek, and thanks to Chris King to allow this biography and ideas on the development of philately to be shared.