The Royal Mail will be issuing a set of James Bond stamps on Tuesday 8th January to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Ian Fleming.
Featuring covers from a selection of the books including Fleming’s first novel, Casino Royale, the stamps will be available to purchase from post offices as well as available on first day covers.
Buckingham Covers is one company to produce first day covers for the stamps, which are available to pre-order. The first day covers will be postmarked in Mayfair or St Margaret’s-at-Cliff, Kent, depending on the cover selected; the former is where Ian Fleming was born, while the latter is where he lived.
James Bond first day cover 1Another set of first day covers will also be available from Bletchley Covers, based around “Operation Ruthless”. This was a scheme devised by Fleming during his time in Naval Intelligence to capture a German U-boat complete with Enigma cipher machine. As well as providing the inspiration for the code machine in From Russia With Love (Spektor in the book, changed to Lektor in the film), the Enigma codes were cracked by Bletchley Park’s boffins.
