News: BTA Weekend 2026
02/05/2026 @ 7:48pm
The BTA held its seventh residential weekend in April, at its regular venue of the Oxford Spires Hotel. Around 30 attendees enjoyed a varied and entertaining programme, starting with a display of “Philatelic Firsts” by Les Ashton-Smith. This was nothing to do with SG1 but a look at the many innovative ways in which stamp issuing authorities have embedded novel materials into their stamps, from various minerals, different materials, through to holograms and ‘moving images’.
Our second guest, Katrin Raynor, is an astronomer who has published books on the subject, worked on The Sky at Night, and even had an asteroid named after her. She regularly promotes stamp collecting to audiences with an interest in astronomy, demonstrating to non-collectors just how engaging the hobby can be. On this occasion her talk “Exploring Astronomy and Space through Philately” presented a wide variety of different philatelic materials showing aspects of astronomy from its early study through to space exploration.
Our final speaker, Ian Shapiro, gave an amazing display on “Royal Household Mail”. This was a mix of covers and other philatelic material, many with very rare markings, plus a range of ephemera to illustrate his story. The talk covered over 400 years of Britain’s monarchs, starting with official correspondence from Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth I, each marked with wooden handstamps of the the monarch’s signature, created to allow authorized officials to sign documents on their behalf. Queen Victoria started the practice of annotating the address side of envelopes she sent, a practice followed by her successors. This display was a wonderful piece of British history and a detailed study of the rare postal markings generated by the Royal Household.
As well as these displays, attendees all had multiple opportunities to show sheets from their own collections, resulting in a huge range of different topics covered. But the programme was as much a social event as a philatelic one, with drinks receptions, meals and socialising very much part of the event. Comments afterwards indicated just how successful this was, referring to “a very engaging group of collectors” and “I learnt so much over the time that I was there and I really enjoyed how friendly, welcoming and chatty everyone was”.
We hope to hold another such event in 2028.
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