Special commemorative stamp series features CWGC sites and marks 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War

To mark the 75th Anniversary of the end of the Second World War, the United Kingdom’s Royal Mail has created a set of 12 stamps that reflect the mix of emotions people felt as news of the war’s end became known. Collectively the stamps cover the concepts of Celebration; Return; and Remembrance.

Eight stamps depict scenes of celebration by service personnel and civilians when news of the conflict’s end was announced, and the subsequent return of personnel from overseas and children who were evacuated. Originally shot in black and white, all eight images have been brought to life in colour for the first time by colourist, Royston Leonard.

For the remembrance series, Royal Mail approached the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Four additional stamps presented in a Miniature Sheet show images of official monuments and cemeteries built to remember and honour the fallen as well as a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.

The stamps will be available on general sale from 8 May.

The eight stamps depict:

• A serviceman returning home to Oreston, South Devon, from his airbase in Lincolnshire
• Jubilant nurses celebrating VE Day in Liverpool
• Ecstatic crowds celebrating VE Day in London’s Piccadilly
• Evacuees returning home to London after a wartime stay in Leicester
• Troops marching along Oxford St, London, during a parade for the ‘Victory over Japan’ exhibition in August 1945
• Soldiers and sailors leaving a demobilisation centre carrying their civilian clothes in boxes
• Allied prisoners of war at Aomori Camp near Yokohama, Japan, cheering their rescuers
• A Wren (member of the Women’s Royal Naval service) proposing a toast during the VE Day celebrations in Glasgow

The stamps in the Miniature Sheet feature:

YAD VASHEM, JERUSALEM

Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Second World War Nazi genocide of six million Jews (which became known as the Holocaust), Yad Vashem – from the Hebrew for ‘A Memorial and a name’ was established in 1953. The Hall of Names memorial holds the names of millions of Holocaust victims, with some 600 portraits displayed on the exhibit’s cone-shaped ceiling.

RUNNYMEDE MEMORIAL

Located near Egham, Surrey, and maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the Runnymede Memorial – sometimes known as the Air Forces Memorial – was unveiled by the Queen in 1953. It commemorates over 20,000 airmen and women who were lost during operations from bases in the UK and Europe during the Second World War and who have no known grave.

PLYMOUTH NAVAL MEMORIAL

Originally unveiled in 1924 to commemorate more than 7,000 sailors who died in the First World War and have no known grave, the memorial was extended in the early 1950s to include nearly 16,000 sailors who perished during the Second World War. It is one of three national naval memorials built and maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

RANGOON MEMORIAL, MYANMAR

Situated within the Taukkyan War Cemetery, the Rangoon Memorial commemorates almost 27,000 dead of the British and Commonwealth Land Forces who fell during the Second World War campaigns against the Japanese in Burma (Myanmar) with no known grave. Established by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in 1958, it forms the centrepiece of the cemetery which contains the graves of nearly 6000 Commonwealth soldiers.