March 8, 2015

Finest Hour 158, Spring 2013

Page 48

By Richard M. Langworth

Churchill World Stamp Catalogue, by Celwyn, Patricia and Alison Ball. AJBukz Productions, softbound in full color, 218 pages, $89.95. Available online in two different bindings: perfect bound http://bit.ly/VQssjA; spiral bound http://bit.ly/VQuBvI. Member price $76.

One of the earliest members of The Churchill Centre, Celwyn Ball served from 1983 to the early 1990s as chairman of the International Churchill Society of Canada and, with his late wife Patricia, he attended many conferences in North America and England. In 2002 he received the Blenheim Award, an overdue recognition of his contributions to the memory of Sir Winston and to the Centre and Societies; but his masterwork was still to come.

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Celwyn’s Churchill interest was kindled after he served with the British First Army during the campaign in North Africa. As an Intelligence sergeant in the Reconnaissance Corps, he helped protect Generals Dwight Eisenhower and Mark Clark. “General Clark was six and a half feet tall,” Celwyn remembers, “and we were told to ‘keep our holsters open’ to protect such an easy target, not to mention all the colonels and majors around him.” Modestly describing himself as a “lowly sergeant,” he sustained wounds that he never quite got over, like so many heroes of the Desert Armies. A welder, draftsman and engineer, his projects included design and development of new bridges, overhead cranes and large-scale mobile equipment. He emigrated to Canada in 1957.

A philatelist, Celwyn was attracted to the postage stamps commemorating Churchill. He began his collection in 1965 with the British Commonwealth “omnibus” issue, in which thirty-two countries produced their versions of a uniform design picturing Sir Winston with a backdrop of searchlights and St. Paul’s Cathedral in the Blitz. Great Britain, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand issued their own Churchill commemoratives, which he quickly acquired.

Next Celwyn sifted through his general world collection and stamp catalogues for other stamps issued to honor WSC. He was surprised at the quantity, including “forerunners,” issued before 1965. The most famous of those was produced by Colombia: a “Big Three” overprint on a 1939 stamp to mark the Yalta conference in 1945.

Celwyn then set out to amass all the Churchill commemoratives, whose numbers peaked in 1965-66, and again during the Churchill Centenary in 1974. This was a formidable task. The British Channel Islands (Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, Sark and Herm) alone issued nineteen sets and twenty images. Among independent countries the leader is Antigua & Barbuda, with thirteen sets and eleven images.

Celwyn was faced with a challenge by the so-called “stamps” from Arab Trucial states like Ajman, Fujeira, Sharjah and Um-al-Qiwain, complete with a multitude of revalued issues, overprints and souvenir sheets. Then there were “locals” and labels, ostensibly issued to cover the carriage of postage from holiday islands to the nearest general post office. Some, like Herm Island, off Guernsey, were genuine, but most hardly ever saw postal use and were largely produced to reap profit from the worldwide Churchill collector interest. The largest issuers of locals, hardly ever any of which were used for carriage, were the Marshall Islands and Calf of Man, with eighteen sets each. Such stamps are known as “black blots” by philatelists, and identifying them was the original raison d’être of the Churchill Study Unit, which grew into today’s Churchill Centre.

For Celwyn it made no difference: he wanted them all. Somebody had to do this! As a result, his collection today may be the only known complete assembly of every Churchill stamp ever issued. It was a colossal effort. More than 150 stamp-issuing nations produced over 500 Churchill stamps, from 1945 to date. Many are very rare.

The next step was reducing his thirty-plus volumes to catalogue form, a task begun by Celwyn and Patricia and completed with the technical expertise of their daughter Alison. The Churchill World Stamp Catalogue reproduces in color 526 stamps, complete with accompanying, informative notes.

We have only one regret, which has nothing to do with the production. In his draft manuscript, Celwyn included numbers from the major catalogue publishers: Scott, Minkus, Caras and Stanley Gibbons. But several of these publishers refused to license the use of their numbers, the lingua franca of philately, without forbiddingly prohibitive conditions. The authors had no choice but to eliminate them, which makes finding the stamps on dealer lists considerably harder than it needs to be. Ironically, this also discourages the use of the catalogues their narrow-minded publishers seek to protect.

Undaunted, the authors supplied their own unique numbers, impeccable documentation, and large-size color illustrations. The result is a work of highest quality in the field of Churchill Studies. Even if you are not a stamp collector, the details and illustrations in this beautiful book belong in your Churchill library: a tribute not only to Sir Winston, but to the affable veteran who served his memory, and his country.

“To collect Churchill stamps,” Celwyn Ball writes, “is to see how his influence and literary writings were recognized throughout the world.” Don’t be without this one.