To this day, most of what I know about world geography is a result of the used international postage stamps I collected as a kid. In later years, my interest in stamps occasionally reactivated based on topical interests at the time. There was an Abraham Lincoln phase, and – no surprise – a Winston Churchill phase. I appreciated that designers of postage stamps generally treat their subjects with reverence. So what happened with this horror of a stamp from the Republic of Mali? I have no idea, but its recent rediscovery prompted me to look for similar visual blasphemies.

In 1966, the year after Churchill died, there was an “omnibus issue,” in which more than thirty countries in the British Commonwealth unveiled stamps with a common design. The omnibus series evidently made such an impression on the postal authorities in Belize that they issued the monstrosity below to commemorate its 50th anniversary. (Belize was called British Honduras at the time of the 1966 issue … the stuff you absorb when you’re a geeky young collector of stamps).

Just asking … What prompted a Yemenite designer to portray Churchill as a Russian oligarch?

Cameroon used an image from the movie in which William Shatner played Winston Churchill … that is if there ever was a movie in which William Shatner played Winston Churchill.

These stamps from Barbuda and Dahomey (now Benin) are just so incredibly depressed and depressing. Of course I’m biased, but I think most of us would expect better, more realistic images to commemorate one of the most important, inspiring, and recognizable faces from the past 150 years.

On the other hand, Churchill doesn’t look bad in this Marshall Islands’ commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Tehran Conference. In fact he looks good … too good. And how about FDR? … those teeth and that hair! And then there’s manscaped Joe Stalin. This stamp has the vibe of a poster for an international caper or a buddy movie.

As for my book, it passed another milestone this past month when I received the first proofs from the Naval Institute Press. After working on these paragraphs and pages in Microsoft Word for years, it was more than a little exciting to see the story in printed manuscript form. It was more than a little bit humbling as well to notice punctuation, capitalization, and italicization inconsistencies and errors that I had previously overlooked. It wasn’t quite the written equivalent of the Mali stamp above, but I was grateful for opportunity to take another swipe at polishing my book.

Thanks for reading,
Bill

PS: While we’re on the subject of noteworthy stamps from the Marshall Islands … in 1990, on the 50th anniversary of the attack at the heart of my book, they issued a stamp featuring British Vice Admiral Sir James Somerville and French Admiral Marcel-Bruno Gensoul, both of whom play significant roles in Operation Catapult.

What in the world have they done to poor Winston Churchill?