With the death in 1922 of Shackleton, his beloved leader and friend, and his decision to emigrate to South Africa, the reputation of this extraordinary man was largely forgotten.

Frank Wild was born in Skelton, Yorkshire in 1873, the second born of 13 children. His father, Benjamin, a school teacher, hoped he would follow in his footsteps but from the age of 4 Wild recalled his yearning to go to sea. At the age of 16 he joined the Merchant Navy where he remained for the next nine years, often working on "lime juicers for maximum work for minimum food and wages." His capacity for hard, honest work in the harshest of conditions paved the way for his acceptance into the Royal Navy shortly followed by being selected from 3,000 naval recruits to join Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery expedition of 1901 (2 x 60p).

During a sledging foray in 1902, a young seaman, George Vince, slipped and disappeared over an ice cliff into the sea never to be seen again. Three more of the party nearly met the same fate when Wild, who had hammered nails into the soles of his boots, managed to halt their passage. It was typical of his quick thinking and exceptional capacity to stay calm at all times.

In 1909 Wild joined the Nimrod expedition (2 x 70p) and was chosen to join Shackleton on the attempt on the South Pole. Beating all records they got within only ninety-seven miles of the Pole when forced to turn back. On the return journey, some seven hundred miles of appalling exhaustion and hunger, Wild and Shackleton's relationship was cemented. "S[hackleton] privately forced upon me his one breakfast biscuit, and would have given me another tonight had I allowed him. I do not suppose that anyone else in the world can thoroughly realise how much generosity and sympathy was shown by this; I do, and by God I shall never forget. Thousands of pounds would not have bought that one biscuit."

In spite of Scott's pressing invitations to join him on what was to be his fateful Terra Nova expedition, Wild joined the Australian, Mawson on the Aurora ( 2 x 95p) and took charge of the Western party of seven men, surviving for a year on an ice shelf, named the Shackleton Ice Shelf.

In 1914 he joined Shackleton's Endurance expedition (2 x £1.15p) in an attempt to cross the Antarctic continent via the South Pole. Eventually the Endurance was crushed and sank in the Weddell Sea and Wild displayed outstanding fortitude and leadership when Shackleton entrusted him with the 21 men stranded on Elephant Island.

On his return, Wild was commissioned Lieutenant in R.N.V.R. and sent to Archangel to supervise the arrival of war materials. In 1918 he was released by the Admiralty to take part in an expedition under Shackleton to Spitsbergen, ostensibly to prospect for minerals but quasi-officially to establish a British presence in the area.

After the war, Wild with his great friend Dr James McIlroy, departed for Nyasaland to try their hand at farming, a venture that showed potential until Shackleton asked them to return to England and join him on the Quest and a foray back into the ice. Wild did not hesitate.

Tragically, Shackleton suddenly died of a heart attack on board and Wild assumed command of the ship. The following year, in 1923, with his new wife Vera Altman, Wild emigrated to South Africa to farm cotton. The farming venture failed, as did his marriage and to compound his difficulties South Africa was caught up in the grip of the Great Depression. Wild moved from job to job, often struggling to make ends meet. The privations he had endured during his expeditions took a toll on his health, yet he maintained the same calm and sagacity that had seem him through his years as an explorer.

In 1931 he married Trixie Rowbotham with whom he spent eight happy years. While working as a store-keeper on a mine in the town of Klerksdorp he suddenly died of pneumonia.

Sadly no-one knew where he was buried or what had happened to his remains; he was forgotten in life and in death, that is until now. After a seven year search his ashes were found in Johannesburg, by his biographer Angie Butler. With the permission of his descendants and the Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, in November 2011, Frank Wild is to make his final journey. His ashes will be interred alongside Shackleton's grave and he will finally be re-united with his beloved ‘Boss' in the whaler's cemetery in Grytviken, South Georgia.

Text by Angie Butler, author of ‘The Quest for Frank Wild'.
Technical Details
Designer Andrew Robinson
Printer BDT International
Process Stochastic lithography
Perforation 14 per 2cms
Stamp size 28.45 x 42.58mm
Sheet Layout 10 (5 se-tenant pairs)
Release date 25 November, 2011

Produced by the BBC's Natural History Unit, Frozen Planet is the most ambitious series on the Polar Regions ever undertaken.

For four years, camera teams braved temperatures down to -50 degrees C, 200 mile per hour katabatic winds, midnight sun and long dark polar nights to capture the essence of these remote and highly seasonal ends of the earth.

More than 2300 filming days were spent in the field, by small crews working in the most remote corners of Antarctica and across the Arctic. The aim was to take the viewer on a journey through the Polar Regions - north and south - some of the greatest, least explored wildernesses on the planet.

In the south, one of the key locations was the sub-Antarctic Island of South Georgia. The team undertook 4 major filming trips to document the lives of some remarkable animals whose dramas play out on this remote and spectacular island.

But filming here isn't for the faint-hearted: 900 miles from the Falklands, over some of the roughest seas on the planet, this is an unforgiving place with no margin for error. Their filming platforms varied from the small and nimble 65ft yacht, Golden Fleece, to the majestic HMS Endurance, the Royal Navy's Icebreaking patrol ship and her Lynx helicopters which gave unique aerial opportunities to the series.

Six different camera teams were deployed to South Georgia over a period of around 3 months, covering stories as varied as the whaling history to Shackleton's epic walk. By far the most effort, however, was spent documenting the lives of the animals, which visit the island during the different seasons.

60p - For spring, the key story was the arrival of the Southern elephant seals. South Georgia plays host to a raft of marine mammals, the biggest aggregations on earth, and the elephant seals are some of the most impressive. The 3,000 kg blubbery ‘beach master' males fight to gain harems of females by rearing up and bashing together their large proboscises. This is their only chance to sire the next generation and the competition is brutal. Gingerly approaching the giant males - which can reach a remarkable 5m in length - the camera team used a mixture of traditional and high-speed cameras to capture the action in all its glory.

70p - While many animals come to South Georgia for its brief summer, others have spent the long cold winter here too. This includes the wandering albatross chicks, which spend their formative months at breeding grounds on Bird Island, on the west side of South Georgia. For these comical young, learning to fly with the world's largest wings, is anything but easy.

Cameraman John Aitchison spent several weeks at the Bird Island albatross colony, waiting to film the rite of passage faced by every young bird as it takes to the air for the first time. Arriving at the island, he was dismayed to hear that even Lance Tickell, whose pioneering research had revealed so much about these giant birds, had never actually witnessed the moment when a young wanderer takes to the air.

John waited day upon day beside these swan-sized babies as they practiced and tried, until finally one opened its wings into the wind and lift clear off the ground. This special moment touched John as one of the few people in the world ever to have witnessed such a moment in a young birds life. This could be the start of sixty years spent mostly in flight cruising the whole of the Southern ocean.

95p - Autumn is a funny season in the poles, broadly described as the time that the temperature drops abruptly and many animals rush to leave. For the fur seals of South Georgia, it's the time when the adults leave and the weaned pups are left alone on the beach waiting the moment when they too will go to sea. At the peak of the breeding season there are around 4 million fur seals on South Georgia, but these numbers dwindle abruptly once mating is over and the pups are weaned.

One in 1000 fur seals are born blonde, and these are the ones which captured the hearts of cameraman / producer team Ted Giffords and Miles Barton. They are instantly recognisable as individuals in a crowd of several thousand brown seals and inevitably attract the most attention. But their individuality doesn't seem to do them any harm as the team also saw a blonde adult bull with a harem of females as well as a couple of blonde mothers with their own brown pups.

£1.15p - Most of the breeding animals leave South Georgia by the time winter comes. The most prominent year-round resident is the king penguin. Their young take 10-13 months to fledge, and at St Andrews Bay, the largest colony, there is a healthy population during every season.

As the snowstorms get harsher, the chicks huddle together to share warmth. Their thick brown fur coats provided a pretty backdrop to the falling snow, but sometimes the snowstorms rolling down from the hills was so strong that the crew - cameraman Martyn Colbeck and director Chadden Hunter - sometimes lost sight of the chocolate-coloured huddles standing just metres away from them.

This stamp shows the remarkable walk that each king penguin parent must do when it returns to the colony from a long fishing trip at sea. The adult, alert and moving with purpose would push through thousands of fluffy brown chicks in the falling snow listening out for the call of their one and only offspring.

£2.50p - souvenir sheet showing a Wandering Albatross in flight against the South Georgia backdrop.

Frozen Planet broadcasts on BBC One in autumn 2011. The series is presented by Sir David Attenborough, who himself first visited South Georgia in 1982 while filming for the television series, Living Planet.

The theme of these stamps, like the series they represent, is the extreme seasonality that occurs in the Polar Regions.

Text by Dr Elizabeth White, BBC Natural History Unit

Technical Details:
Designer: Andrew Robinson
Printer: Cartor Security Printing
Process: Stochastic lithography
Perforation: 13 ¼ x 13 ½ per 2cms
Stamp size: 28 x 42mm
Sheet Layout: 4 within pictorial sheetlet plus single stamp souvenir sheet
Release date: 15 September 2011
Production Co-ordination: Creative Direction (Worldwide) Ltd
BBC Logo - © BBC

Photographic credits and copyright:-
Stamps
Spring - elephant seals Fredi Devas
Summer - albatross chic Fredi Devas
Autumn - blonde fur seal Chadden Hunter
Winter - king penguin Chadden Hunter
S/S - wandering albatross Ian McCarthy
S/S - icebergs Chadden Hunter

Sheet Borders
Spring Chadden Hunter
Summer Fredi Devas
Autumn Miles Barton
Winter Chadden Hunter

FDC
Mountain backdrop Chadden Hunter

The Post Office has also released a souvenir sheet with a £2 stamp showing an official Royal Wedding portrait of the bride and groom in the throne room at Buckingham Palace. The background of the souvenir sheet shows Westminster Abbey during the wedding ceremony itself.

Technical details:
Designer Andrew Robinson
Printer BDT International
Process Stochastic Lithography
Perforation 14 per 2cms
Stamp size 28.45 x 42.58mm
S/S size 94 x 64mm (with 31.75 x 48.26mm stamp)
Sheet Layout 10 with pictorial borders
Release Date 25th July 2011
Production Co-ordination Creative Direction (Worldwide) Ltd

Photographic credits:-
70p Eddie Keogh/Rex Features
95p Tim Rooke/Rex Features
£1.15 Rex Features
£2 Hugo Burnand/Clarence House/Rex Features
S/S background, Rex Features