ROYAL Mail starts the new stamp year by celebrating the music of The Beatles with six self-adhesive stamps and a miniature sheet, both issued this week.

This is the first time Royal Mail has published a stamp issue across standard and miniature sheets, allowing collectors and members of the public alike to celebrate the band's legacy on two very different formats.

The six self-adhesive stamps feature some of the band's iconic album covers, including With The Beatles which has the very appropriate track Please Mr Postman. The other album covers include Revolver, Help!, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Let It Be and Abbey Road.

The four-stamp miniature sheet takes a look at some of the memorabilia produced for eager fans of the world's first super-group, including their first single, Love Me Do, a Beatles guitar, lunchbox of Yellow Submarine and a tea tray.

The Beatles stamps and miniature sheet, along with all the products featured in the issue, were produced in close collaboration with Apple Corps, and designed by Johnson Banks, who also created the amazing 'do it yourself' stamp designs for 2003's Fun Fruit and Veg issue.

For the six self-adhesive Beatles stamps Johnson Banks explored a 'piles of albums' approach, producing irregular stamp designs which offer a glimpse of several other albums released by the band.

Barbara Roulston, Head of External Relations at Royal Mail Group said, "The Beatles have made an extraordinary cultural contribution to the music of this country.

"This stamp issue immortalises images from some of The Beatles' most iconic albums and judging by the positive response we have already received from collectors and the public, The Beatles should be one of the most popular issues for many years.

"It was very important to ensure that we celebrated a band as exceptional as The Beatles in a way that reflected their massive contribution to music, and we hope that this set of stamps has achieved that."