Design

No sooner had the Second World War ended than the governments of the victorious powers were promoting their ideology (and the folly of the alternative) to their peoples and beyond. This collection of posters, many by leading artists, ranges from propaganda regarding the reshaping of Europe on either side of the Iron Curtain, and responses to the nuclear threat, to a selection of cinema posters for films encouraging a partisan reading of the political situation.

From the world's first postage stamp, the 1840 Penny Black, to the First Class stamp 2012, Chris West's selection of 36 stamps – 'some beautiful, some quirky, some baffling, some stained with blood' – are the inspiration for his idiosyncratic and entertaining history of Britain. Among his collection are the 1881 Penny Lilac (33 billion printed); the first decimal set (1971); and a single foreign stamp telling a story of reparations and hyperinflation: a 1923 German 200 mark stamp, overprinted 2 million.