Wilding series

The stamps reproduced a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II taken during a photographic session on 26 February 1952 by Dorothy Wilding, who had been working at the Royal Court since 1937.

[2] Four symbolic flowers of each country of the United Kingdom were also depicted, imitating one of the definitive stamp designs of King George VI's reign.

Dorothy Wilding's photograph depicts The Queen wearing the State Diadem made for George IV in the 1820s, which was designed to be worn outside a Cap of Maintenance.

In a letter sent to the Post Office in April 1961, they expressed the difficulty of including the large Wilding portrait in their designs for commemorative stamps and the fact that the Queen was half turned to the viewer was also felt to be unsatisfactory.

[6][7] Regional issues (also known as Country Definitives), for Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man, were first introduced in 1958.

Whilst the Wilding head was common to all stamps the frames differed in that they incorporated regional symbols such as the Scottish thistle or the Welsh dragon.

This included all the issues showing the Wilding design, except that £1 stamps of the 1952 high value series remained valid.

[11] In addition to their use in the United Kingdom both low and high values were overprinted for use in North Africa (Morocco Agencies, Tangier) and the Middle East (Bahrain, Kuwait, Muscat, Qatar).

The commemorative miniature sheet of definitives issued by the Royal Mail for the 2012 Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II included one stamp with photography by Dorothy Wilding based on the 1952 design by Edmund Dulac.