May Announcement from James O’Fee about the UK’s 1998 Narnia Stamp

The design of the Royal Mail C. S. Lewis stamp is now public, and it is gorgeous! The designer is Peter Malone.

The stamp shows Mr Tumnus and Lucy, hand-in-hand, running with Aslan over snow, in front of a lamp-post. Wording along the left margin reads ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe CS LEWIS’.

The denomination of the stamp is 26p, First Class internal Post inside the UK, and bound to be the greatest seller in the series. The other stamps in the MAGICAL WORLDS series are:

20p (Second Class UK Post) — ‘The Hobbit’ JRR Tolkien 37p ‘The Phoenix and the Carpet’ E Nesbit 43p [cheapest letter to US etc] ‘The Borrowers’ Mary Norton 63p ‘Through the Looking Glass’ Lewis Carrol.

The date of issue remains 21st July. You can order copies of the C. S. Lewis Stamp by telephoning the Royal Mail orderline at the beginning of July to place your order. The number is (UK) 0345 641 641.

Email inquiries: british.philatelic.bureau@dial.pipex.com.

US Orders: UK stamps can be bought from USPS, Stamp Fulfillment Services, PO Box 7247, PHILADELPHIA, PA 19101-9014, telephone number 1-800-STAMP-24 (no e-mail address). Payment can be by credit card, cheque, bank draft or a US Postal Service Money Order made payable to USPS.

I’m told the stamp designs will appear soon on the Royal Mail web site http://www.royalmail.com. In the next few days, we in the C S Lewis Centenary Group hope to put the stamp design on our web site as well http://www.d-n-a.net/users/cslewis/. From our site we’ll create a link to the Royal Mail site, where we may hope that the entire series may be seen. [Warning — I haven’t yet been able to locate stamp designs on the Royal Mail site.]

Royal Mail are producing a postcard, too, showing the design of the C. S. Lewis stamp. I’ll be buying quantities myself. Send your inquiries to the email address above.