Brits at their Best

Christmas Stamps suggest Holiday's spirit

We found them on Archbishop Cranmer's blog, along with a brief meditation on Advent. They are the Royal Mail's 2009 Christmas stamps.

The Mail could release a new stamp every day of the year based on Holiday's work. Between 1861 and 1891 he completed 300 commissions, and he continued to work until he died in 1927. He was "charming" and "hot-tempered", a "keen lakeland walker" and an artist with extraordinary amounts of energy (Oxford DNB). The stamps don't do him justice - you have to imagine large windows glowing with Holiday's figures - but I will be happy if I find one on a Christmas card in my mailbox. William Morris designed the angel.

Shepherd by Henry Holiday, St Mary's Upavon, Wiltshire

Madonna and Child by Henry Holiday, Ormesby St Michael,
Ormesby, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk

Angel by William Morris, Church of St James, Staveley, Kendal

Posted by Cat at December 03, 2009 02:49 AM | Permalink |

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A good start.

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The people of Britain and the Anglosphere defied a world of cruelty and superstition to create life-changing gifts. This is your inheritance. Glorious. Hardcover, 140 pages, 125 colour illustrations.

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DAVID ABBOTT MD, MRCP

I have practiced medicine in England, America and Canada for the last four decades. I believe in the principles of Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights. I am a father, grandfather, bell ringer, environmental campaigner and marathoner.

Brits at their Best produced thousands of indispensable inventions, developed wildly popular sports, designed romantic houses and gardens, created astonishing literary masterpieces, lived with style and humour, tackled dangerous missions with daring and ingenuity, and fought with indomitable courage to establish and protect the free world.

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I saw tyranny firsthand in Eastern Europe. (My background is English, Irish, and Czech.) I received my degree in Classical Greek from Columbia University, New York, worked in publishing in the United States for twenty years, and helped the homeless for seven years.

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