This is a list of people on stamps of the United Kingdom. (The number in parentheses is the year of first appearance on a stamp.)
Queen Victoria on a common stamp of the 1880s.
Until 2005, the Royal Mail policy was that the only identifiable living people depicted on British stamps were the monarch and other members of the Royal Family (or people imminently marrying into it). This policy was only occasionally broken. The first exception was in the 1967 issue commemorating the solo round the world voyage of Gipsy Moth IV where a person appeared as an unidentifiable blob on the yacht – as there was only one person on board it must have been Francis Chichester. Similarly in the issue honouring Freddie Mercury, drummer Roger Taylor can be seen in the background.
The rule was again broken in December 2003 when players from England's team which beat Australia in the 2003 Rugby World Cup Final were shown; however, no faces appeared. The rule was finally abandoned with the release on 6 October 2005 of a set of stamps to commemorate the English cricket team's victory over Australia in the 2005 Ashes series. The four stamps clearly and deliberately depict members of the team including captain Michael Vaughan and Andrew "Freddie" Flintoff. A series of stamps released in January 2007 featured some of the most famous Beatles album covers, which also show members of the band. Similarly, a 2011 stamp features actor David Tennant in the role of Hamlet. A series of Gold Medal stamps, issued during the 2012 Summer Olympics, feature British gold medal-winning athletes.
