'Could one wish for a finer central feature... than the very lovely head which appears on our stamps today?'

SD SARGENT, POST OFFICE DEPUTY DIRECTOR GENERAL 1958

On 26 February 1952, the twentieth day of her reign, the young Queen Elizabeth II attended a photographic session at the studios of society photographer Dorothy Wilding to produce portraits suitable for the first definitive stamps of her reign. None of these images was deemed appropriate for the new stamps and a second session was commissioned for April. This sitting successfully resulted in the approved image to adorn the definitive stamps, first issued on 5 December that year. The renown designer Edmund Dulac (right) was also commissioned to create an image of the Queen. Although his drawing of the monarch was not used as the definitive portrait, he did carry out some modifications by hand to Wilding's photographic image to meet Her Majesty's wishes. Dozens of designs were considered to frame this portrait and by the summer of 1952 five basic designs had been selected – by Dulac, Enid Marx, Mary Adshead, MC Farrar Bell and George Knipe. These 'Wilding definitives' are widely regarded as classics of design. Almost 50 years after the Queen's Coronation, this miniature sheet reproduces nine of the issued 18 Wilding definitives as postally-valid stamps, in values comparable to their original postal rate.