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Britain's Royal Mail officially began half a millennium ago, when King Henry VIII knighted the first master of the posts Sir Brian Tuke. Postal towns were established where houses had to have horses on standby always available to deliver mail. Dr Adrian Steele is the director of the British Postal Museum and Archive, and he told Susannah Streeter more about the origins of Royal Mail and what modern postal services can learn from how it developed. (Picture: A proof sheet of Penny Black stamps. Picture credit: Royal Mail.)