Press Release from RPSL
The Royal Philatelic Society London is pleased to announce the recipient of its prestigious Crawford Medal for 2021. The award has been made to James L. Grimwood-Taylor for his book International Postal Reforms, published by the Society in 2020 in two volumes.
The Crawford Medal is awarded each year for the most valuable and original contribution to the study and knowledge of philately published in book form.
In the first volume of Grimwood-Taylor’s new examination of the history of international postal reforms, Postal Reforms and the Historical Background to the Postage Stamp 1550 to 1839, the author studies in detail Rowland Hill’s 1837 Post Office Reform. This publication places Hill’s work in its true historical context and traces the origins of the high postal rates that he sought to reduce.
The second volume, The Birth of the Postage Stamp and its International Effects 1840 to 1898, traces the story of the introduction of cheap postage in Britain and around the world following the August 1839 ‘Penny Postage’ Act.
The author, James Grimwood-Taylor, has been a stamp collector from the age of three and a full-time professional postal historian since the age of 22. He always intended one day to write the definitive study of how and why Rowland Hill’s reforms succeeded; this two-volume book is the result, illustrating more than 800 items from his own collections.
Peoples’ special interests and absolutely driven focus never ceases to amaze me. Whist working waiting for my degree term to begin, I once sat opposite a very dull man in a very large insurance office who was writing a history of the world during his lunch breaks. I am pretty sure he included very few jokes. One man (or woman’s) meat is another man’s poison…