OR Pigeon Post Inspired by Art at Repton

Dear OR Society,

I have been meaning to write to you for a long time and, as is the way of things, kept putting it off to another day. During one of my regular sort-outs of papers I came across your card which you were most kind to send to me on my 80th birthday, more than a year ago now I fear. I was most impressed with your system and the fact that you were organised enough to do that. I think it is a very kind thought and I suppose in a way you must have no idea of how your older ORs are faring.

I was at Latham House from 1953 to 1958 and at Foremarke Prep School for three years before that. My son Nicholas was at Foremarke and the Cross a generation later but I am afraid he does not subscribe to the Public School or boarding School ethos and so his son is being educated in the State system down in Devon where he now lives. I had always hoped my grandson would follow us to Repton but it was not to be. The younger generation does not feel the same way and of course the costs are very high now in relation to normal incomes. My son is an archaeological historian and lecturer.

Over the years I have read about the exploits of many ORs including some of my contemporaries and I had always thought I might send some details of what I have done with my life. Unfortunately I have never done very much of interest to other people I should imagine, having been in and out of different careers and pursuits. When I left Repton, having been unable to get a scholarship to read Classics at either Oxford or Cambridge, I went to the Central School of Speech & Drama in Swiss Cottage and had three happy years there. After that I went a little haphazardly into acting and singing with a band for some years, finally becoming a sound engineer in a film post-production studio in Hampstead and later Queensway.

I met my wife, Judith, before I went to Drama School whilst working at Frinton Repertory Company and when I went on to the Central School I found that she ran the student canteen there. As a result I was well looked after in the food department and we gradually became a couple, getting married in 1963. We weretogether sixty years but I am sad to say that my wife died in January this year after a fall last July and a period of illness. Not many people manage sixty years now I fear, although my sister has been married three years more so it is obviously in the family.

Whilst I was working at the Sound Studio I formed a greetings card company (Elgin Court Designs) which was run from a spare room in the studio. I had first started designing cards in the Art School at Repton, and had helped my sister start a firm, Gallery Five, which became successful and quite well known. Elgin Court became successful and we moved the business to a much larger location in Abingdon, near Oxford, where I changed direction, virtually gave up all connections with the entertainment business and my wife and I worked in the Card Business, producing and selling millions of greetings and Christmas cards over many years. In the end too rapid expansion brought financial difficulties, and we were obliged to sell out the business to a larger organisation. The name continued in use until very recently until the firm which bought us out itself collapsed about a year ago, and nothing remains of my longterm connections with the greetings cards business, my sister’s firm Gallery Five having also closed down voluntarily a few years ago.

During all this time I have had one other abiding interest, which I also had in embryo at Repton, namely philately, stamp collecting, postal history.I have been a collector since my sixth birthday (I can remember how the first gift packet I was given on that day looked) and I have developed my interest in the field all the rest of my life. I purchased the business of the late Harry Hayes who was the leading specialist in the literature of

Philately & Postal History and called the new Company HH Sales Limited, which was also run firstly in London and then from the address in Abingdon. That still continues in a new form as HH Sales, no longer a Limited Company, which is now run by my assistant and colleague of thirty years Casper Pottle, who took over from me five years ago. It continues to function in Bradford as the main source of literature on the subject of philately and postal history.

I joined the Royal Philatelic Society in the late 1960s, became a member of the Expert Committee in the 1970s and I am currently the longest-serving member of that committee having been active for over forty years. Because of my activities there I was firstly made a Fellow of the Society and finally in 2016 was elected to the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists, a small select group to which four or five members from all over the world are added each year, usually one or two from the UK.

Thus, although I have really done nothing much to distinguish myself through my work and life I can probably say that I was one of very, very few Reptonians who became Fellows of the Royal Philatelic Society, and probably the only one who has been elected to the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists.nI am thus able to sign myself as Stephen Holder RDP, FRPSL.

Stephen Holder (L’53)