Buckingham Palace Shares the Incredible Amount of Mail They've Received Since Queen Elizabeth's Death
Stephanie Petit
·3 min read
Victoria Jones - Pool/Getty
Buckingham Palace's correspondence team has been hard at work since the death of Queen Elizabeth.
The palace announced Friday that following the monarch's death on Sept. 8, they have received over 50,000 letters and messages of condolence, including 6,500 in just one day following the Queen's funeral, which took place on Sept. 19. This is a steep uptick in mail — prior to Queen Elizabeth's death, the palace expected up to 1,000 letters each week from members of the public with various queries or messages of good wishes.
New images taken this week at Buckingham Palace show members of the correspondence team sorting through thousands of letters sent to King Charles III, Queen Camilla and other members of the royal family.
Victoria Jones - Pool/Getty
According to the palace, all letters are carefully read. Responses will be sent as the small correspondence team processes the thousands of items.
The mail going out of Buckingham Palace saw a change this week — starting on Tuesday, the postmarks began featuring King Charles' new cypher as monarch. The monogram shows the crown above his first initial "C" intertwined with an "R" for Rex (Latin for King, traditionally used for the monarch dating back to the 12th century), with "III" inside the "R."
Victoria Jones - Pool/Getty
The King chose the design from several that were created by the palace's heraldry experts, the College of Arms.
The symbol will soon become commonplace where royal symbols are shown, replacing Queen Elizabeth's "ERII" insignia. Some of these changes will be gradual, palace officials say, but will be seen on state documents and eventually on the red mailboxes around the U.K.
Victoria Jones - Pool/Getty King Charles
Also on Tuesday, the Royal Mail revealed the commemorative stamp collection that will be issued in the late monarch's honor later this fall. The postage set was the first approved by King Charles since he became sovereign.
"For the past seventy years every British stamp has been personally approved by Her Late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth. Today we are unveiling these stamps, the first to be approved by His Majesty The King, in tribute to a woman whose commitment to public service and duty was unparalleled in the history of this country," Simon Thompson, CEO of the Royal Mail, said in a statement.
The four stamps are grayscale photos of the Queen taken at different points in her life and were first sold as a suite for her Golden Jubilee in 2002. To update the set as a memorial collection, the year of her birth and death were added in the upper corner.
The British mail service also announced that it will move from using an image of Queen Elizabeth on its "everyday" stamp to instead feature a shot of King Charles, 73. A silhouette of the King will similarly replace that of the late Queen on special stamps as well.
The Royal Mail said in a statement that more details will be released in "due course" and that the new Charles stamps "will enter circulation once current stocks of stamps are exhausted" to heed practicalities.
Singaporean VALORANT star Jinggg has rejoined the main roster of Paper Rex and will be returning to competitive play in the upcoming VCT Pacific Split 1.
Russia has faced a backlash after using its veto to effectively end official UN monitoring of sanctions on North Korea, amid a probe into alleged arms transfers between Moscow and Pyongyang.
French President Emmanuel Macron has tasked engineer Anne Bouverot with organising the world's next Artificial Intelligence (AI) safety summit, which is set to take place in France. Bouverot has been asked to continue "ongoing international initiatives to contribute to an open and democratic global governance of AI".The first such summit was organised by the UK in November last year in Bletchley Park, of World War II code-breaker fame. It resulted in the Bletchley Declaration, which was signed b
A number of Russian Telegram channels have been sharing a caricature of French President Emmanuel Macron depicted as a rooster, claiming that it was broadcast by FRANCE 24 in a programme that aired on March 13. However, the image circulating is a doctored version of the cover of a French magazine called L'Hémicycle. The FRANCE 24 clip has also been doctored to include it. If you only have a minute: Several Russian Telegram channels and pro-Russian news sites have been circulating a doctored imag
Saturday’s Boat Race will be the 169th time that Oxford and Cambridge’s men have raced against each other and the 78th time the women’s crews have done so.
At the 2024 New York International Auto Show, Polestar revealed that it's next car will feature a starting price of $56,300. That said, one thing you won't get for that money is a rear window.
Baked ham is a dish with flavor that speaks volumes. Unfortunately, its preparation is a slippery slope - with one mistake in particular you need to avoid.