2024 STUART ROSSITER MEMORIAL LECTURE

This year’s Stuart Rossiter Memorial Lecture will be given by Simon Martin-redman at 5pm on Wednesday, 15 May at the RPSL, 15 Abchurch Lane, London EC4N 7BW.

Simon’s lecture, titled ‘Postal History – Which is more interesting, the postal aspect or the history aspect?’, will take the revised FIP Postal History Guidelines (May 2022) that a Postal History exhibit should ‘generally emphasise rates, routes, regulations, markings, usages and other postal aspects, services, functions and activities related to the history of the development of Postal Services’ as a starting point. However, it has been suggested that the romance of the cover, such as who wrote the letter, why the letter was written and what the contents were, are of much more interest to the non-philatelic viewer and, controversially, probably most collectors as well. By showing examples, the lecture will try to justify this hypothesis. Simon is well known to the international philatelic community. He is the president of the Museum of Philately and vice-president of the Royal Philatelic Society London. In addition, he is a past president of the Sarawak Specialists Society, a member of the European Academy of Philately, a member of the Collectors’ Club of New York, a member of the United Postal Stationery Society and a member of the Society of Postal Historians. In addition, he is a member, and on the board, of the Club de Monte Carlo, a member of the Grand Prix Club (winning the International Grand Prix at Helvetia 2022 in Lugano) and the inaugural winner of the Rowland Hill Medal presented in Monaco in 2022.

Admittance is by ticket only. For a free ticket, please apply to Rex Dixon (rexdixon@btinternet.com). The lecture will be followed by wine and light refreshments.

The Stuart Rossiter Trust is a charity that promotes research into the history of the postal services and to support publication in this area to a high academic standard. For more details, please visit their website (rossitertrust.com).