Sticking up for England!

Published: 10 June, 2010
by DAN CARRIER

STAMPS designed to celebrate England ‘winning’ the World Cup in 1970 have been unearthed in the Post Office’s archives.

The stamps never saw the light of the day because the national side were beaten at the quarter-final stage of the tournament by West Germany.

They were uncovered by researchers looking through a batch of forgotten files as they curated images for a stamp festival at the Guildhall Art Gallery in the City. 

Artist David Gentleman, who lives in Camden Town, told the New Journal his designs can be traced back to when he was asked to follow up on a World Cup stamp he had produced in the build-up for the 1966 tournament, which of course England won on home soil.

The batch of unused 1970 stamps were locked away unseen until they were uncovered by chance while archivists were sorting out stamps for a display to coincide with this summer’s competition, beginning in South Africa tomorrow (Friday).

Mr Gentleman said: “They did not plan very far ahead back then. The Post Office were simply not used to issuing a lot of stamps. It is so much more organised today.”

He was commissioned to produce a single stamp commem­orating England’s successful hosting of the tournament in 1966 – and he was asked to get to work again four years later when the country hoped the team could retain the trophy in Mexico. 

He added: “I had only done one stamp to be issued for 1966 – and when England won, I had to change the label to include ‘winners’.”

He recalls commissioning a photographer to take a picture of two boys playing football for the 1966 design, and then for Mexico, keeping things simple with a goal and a ball.

He said: “The 1970 one was a nice simple design. I look at it now, and I like it. I thought I’d use the notion of a goal being scored. “I was doing very simple designs at the time – I’d got Concorde on to a stamp, and done the logo for British Steel. I wanted to do extreme reduction. I decided that all I needed was the goal and the ball.”

But despite his involvement in the projects, the artist admitted that he has no love for the “beautiful game”.

He added: “I have never been interested in football and I do not remember the game when West Germany knocked out England, and meant my stamp was never produced.

“As for this year, I do not even know when England are playing, or against whom. I’ll be sitting in a field painting while the matches are on.”