The first stamps to feature a portrait of King Charles III have gone on display ahead of their official launch later this year.

The new image shows Charles facing left and is adapted from the one designed by sculptor Martin Jennings for the new UK coins.

Visitors to the Postal Museum in central London will be the first to see them in person before they enter circulation.

The exhibition, called The King’s Stamp, will tell the story of British stamps from the earliest Penny Black featuring Queen Victoria.

Running from today until September 3, it will also include rare stamps such as King Edward VII’s Tyrian Plum, which was never released due to his death in 1910.

Charles’s stamps mark the first time in 70 years a monarch has faced the same way on coins and on stamps.

Since the reign of Charles II in the 1600s, successive monarchs have swapped direction on coins, with the exception of Edward VIII, who insisted on facing left, despite tradition dictating he should face right.

However, no such conventions exist for stamps, which have always featured the monarch pointing left since their invention in Victoria’s reign.

The portrait for Charles’s stamps is the same image used for the new coins (Picture: Royal Mail)

The stamp has been unveiled at the Postal Museum before it goes into circulation later this year (Picture: PA)

The new stamp will be the centrepiece of an exhibition called The King’s Stamp at the Postal Museum in Clerkenwell, London (Picture: Royal Mail Group/Getty)

Aside from the direction, there is another notable difference between the depictions of Charles and his late mother – the new king does not wear a crown.

Again, this follows royal tradition. No British king has been shown wearing a crown on a stamp since they were invented, while both queens – Victoria and Elizabeth – do wear one.

Unlike the coinage, the familiar portrait of Elizabeth II on the stamp did not change as she aged, remaining the same from its introduction in 1967 until her death in September last year.

The image was designed by artist Arnold Machin, and replaced an unusual three-quarters portrait that had been used since the Queen’s coronation in 1953.

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