Douglas Myall

Douglas Myall (born 17 December 1922 in Essex)^[1] is a British civil servant and philatelist. He is known for his exhaustive study of the Machin stamps, the British definitive series in use since 1967. His catalogue, The Complete Deegam Machin Handbook, is one of the main reference book about this series.

Biography

Civil servant, he finished his career at the trademark registry of the Patents Office.^[1] He got interested in stamps while working at the office of the Inspector of Foreign Dividends, where he kept stamps from the incoming mail.^[1]

In the 1950s and 1960s, he collected the Wilding stamps, the first definitives of Queen Elizabeth II's reign. At the same time, he was working at the Inland Revenue and studied security printing that had been helping him in his philatelic activities. His first articles had been published in philatelic press.^[1]

From its start, in 1967, Myall collected the Machins and was a founding member of two specialised clubs; the Great Britain Decimal Stamp Book Study Circle (GB DSB SC) and the British Decimal Stamps Study Circle (BDSSC),^[2] being the founding president of the BDSSC, a position he held for 18 years.

He was not content with the way BDSSC and catalog editor Stanley Gibbons Ltd were handling the potential criteria to study Machin stamps.^[1] In the end, he decided to write his own catalog and with an aspiration to be as exhaustive and precise as possible. The Complete Deegam^[3] Machin Handbook was published in 1993. In July 2003, the third edition contains 1,272 pages in two binders.^[4] A CD-ROM version of the third edition was introduced in 2005. A brand new fourth edition, available on CD-ROM only, was published in April 2010. It is regularly updated by the Deegam Reports sent by e-mail to book owners and printed for their members by some philatelic associations.^[5]

Aside from the Machins, Douglas Myall collects British perfins on covers and practices macro photography of insects.^[1]

Works

• The Complete Deegam Machin Handbook, first edition in 1993 ; third edition, July 2003 ; updates regularly published. Cd-rom edition released in April 2005.
• (2007) 40 Years of Machins. A Timeline, publications #13 of the British Philatelic Bulletin, Royal Mail, ISBN 094165580. This is a 20 page chronology of the Machin series.

References and sources

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Milne, Gordon (April 1999). "In the Spotlight". The Chronicle. http://www.gbstamps.com/gbcc/gbcc_myall_intvw.html. Retrieved 2007-04-23. 
2. ^ "GB DSB SC + BDSSC = MBPC". GBStamps.com. 2006-03-20. http://www.gbstamps.com/news2006_2.html#mbpc. Retrieved 2007-08-15. 
3. ^ Deegam is derived from his complete initials : Douglas George Albert Myall.
4. ^ Presentation of the third édition on the Great Britain Machins by the ’Machin Nut’ website, July 25, 2003, retrieved August 15, 2007.
5. ^ Myall's web site

• Milne, Gordon (April 1999). "In the Spotlight". The Chronicle. http://www.gbstamps.com/gbcc/gbcc_myall_intvw.html. Retrieved 2007-04-23.  The interview of Douglas Myall is undertook by Gordon Milne, then president of the Great Britain Collectors Club, and published in The Chronicle, journal of this club.

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Name	Myall, Douglas
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Date of birth	1922-12-17
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