'Duty can wear you down' : Prince William and his royal duty

• Report rights infringement
• published: 20 Apr 2016
• views: 0

Perched proudly on a pile of foam blocks, but holding Daddy's hand just in case, Prince George poses for his very first postage stamp alongside his father, his grandfather – and the great-grandmother whose face has appeared on more stamps than anyone in history. Ahead of the Queen's 90th birthday tomorrow, the Royal Mail has released this historic image. It is the scene on a new sheet of four commemorative First Class stamps.Much more than that, this is also a photograph which will be remembered long after this week's celebrations. For this is the future. Here are monarchs 41, 42 and 43 (post-Norman Conquest) saluting Number 40. If monarchy stands for anything, it is continuity and stability. And this superb image, captured in the White Drawing Room of Buckingham Palace by Royal Mail photographer Ranald Mackechnie a few months ago, reinforces that. Think of it this way. When Prince George is celebrating his own 90th birthday, it will be the year 2103. And the world will look back on this image of four monarchs stretching over two millennia, three centuries and 177 years, going all the way back to the birth of Princess Elizabeth of York in 1926. We have regularly seen stamps marking important royal birthdays (though the Queen rejected a set to mark her 70th on the grounds that it was a lot of 'fuss' about nothing). But few have been quite as eye-catching as this collection, partly because a British monarch has never celebrated a 90th birthday before. Ostensibly, this is a simple, happy portrait of four generations of one family, from the doted-on little boy to his beloved 'Gan-Gan'. But it involved some very complicated logistical challenges. To begin with, there was the need to find a suitable date in all the royal diaries (Prince George may not yet have much in the way of royal engagements at the age of two but a royal nanny's eat/sleep/bath routine is not to be messed with). Various locations were explored by Mr Mackechnie, a specialist portrait photographer. His original choice had been the Palace's Yellow Drawing Room until test shots showed that it might 'overpower' the photograph and the White Drawing Room was selected instead. The trickiest part was ensuring that all the principals were at roughly the same height and spaced evenly apart. That is because each face has to fit neatly inside its own perforated outline on each sheet of four stamps. You can't go to the Post Office and say: 'I want a dozen Prince Georges, please.' You have to buy the full sheet of four for £2.56 (the regular price for four First Class stamps) and then press out each face one by one and lick the back. If you want a dozen Georges, you must buy a dozen sheets. Because of the design, there was no possibility of photographing Prince George on someone's lap. He had to stand alone. So Mr Mackechnie brought along a batch of high-density foam blocks for him to climb on. You can almost hear the cry of 'I'm the king of the castle'. According to royal aides, he was 'as good as gold' during the shoot which lasted around 25 minutes. The family are dressed in various shades of blue, with Prince George in the same £59 Rachel Riley shirt and navy corduroys he wore for his first official photograph with Princess Charlotte last June. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDIs... Page:https://www.facebook.com/Make-Money-O... Website:http://powerofteam.net/ Chat Conversation End