First Class: A History of Britain in 36 Postage Stamps by Chris West

This book is clearly going to mostly appeal to Philatelitic geeks, however they might be a little disappointed as it is not, and never claims to be, a history of the stamps.  It includes only brief commentaries about the 36 which are the starting point of the chapters.

These chapters give us little snap shots of social history, and the format of beginning with a object, in this case a stamp, as a good way to tell an engaging story.   There are no great revelations, it is for the most part a common place history, but it is well told.  I have dipped in to it reading a chapter or two at a time over the best part of a year.

As we come to the latter chapters there is perhaps a shift across that blurry line between the historian’s and the journalist’s art – as 2012 might be seen as a little too early to have written a “history” of 2012 – however it is of no great consequence.

The account is conservative, albeit with the smallest of ‘c’s, in the sense that it tends toward an emphasis on the continuity across the 170 years with which it deals, while other histories might want to focus instead on ways in which contemporary Britain differs from that of the early Victorian era when the Penny Black was first issued.