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A son has been charged with stealing a rare and expensive stamp collection belonging to his late father, the former spokesman for the Archbishop of Birmingham.

Press officer Peter Jennings is understood to have amassed a personal collection worth tens of thousands of pounds since acquiring his first set marking the Queen’s Coronation in 1953.

He died, aged 65, last year after a long battle with cancer. But the Mail can reveal his only son Joseph, 29, has been arrested by police and charged with theft after the stamps disappeared.

It is understood the 60-year-old collection was later sold for around £13,000 – said to be a fraction of its true value.

A West Midlands Police spokeswoman said: “A Birmingham man is due to appear before Birmingham Magistrates Court on 8 July, accused of stealing a collection of stamps worth in excess of £13,000.

“Joseph Jennings was arrested in March in connection with the alleged theft of stamps and other valuable items from a personal collection.

“The 29-year-old, of Bantock Way, Harborne, was later charged with the offence of theft from a dwelling and will appear in court later this week.”

A West Midlands Crown Prosecution Service spokesman confirmed Joseph Jennings was to appear before magistrates tomorrow for a first hearing.

Birmingham-born Peter Jennings was an outspoken journalist and broadcaster, as well as an internationally recognised stamp expert. He had been diagnosed with lymphocytic leukaemia in 2009 and passed away last September.

He was the former press secretary to two of the city’s Archbishops, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols and later the Most Rev Bernard Longley.

Mr Jennings had also been press officer to the Right Rev Hugh Montefiore, the Anglican Bishop of Birmingham, from 1979 to 1983.

His interest in stamps began on June 3, 1953, the day after the Queen’s Coronation when his grandfather bought him a set issued by the Royal Mail to mark the occasion.

He later recalled: “He also bought me a Stanley Gibbons stamp album that I still have. In those days, I was among the many children who were enthralled by stamps. We would buy packets from newsagents containing brilliantly coloured stamps from countries we’d never heard of and compare our collections.”

His collection is understood to have included sets of Vatican stamps showing churches, Popes and art from Vatican museums, brought back to Birmingham for him by his uncle who regularly visited Rome.

Mr Jennings, a member of the Birmingham Philatelic Society since 1962 and a member of the Royal Philatelic Society since 1966, had enjoyed combining his passions for Catholicism and philately. “Postage stamps and Catholicism go well together”, he once declared.

In 1997 the church press officer launched the Royal Mail series of saint stamps. And in 2010 he encouraged the Isle of Man Postal Authority to issue stamps to mark the 2010 visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the UK and the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman.

The Catholic journalist bagged the first interview with a member of the Royal Family on stamps, in 1998, when he interviewed the Duke of Edinburgh about stamps connected to the World Wildlife Fund.

Four years later Mr Jennings interviewed the Princess Royal on stamps relating to Antartica and also co-wrote the Queen Mother’s Century Celebrated in Stamps.

A plan to write a book about stamps and Princess Diana was shelved after an apparent dispute between Mr Jennings and the Royal Mail.