As I understand it, to appear on a British postage stamp you're meant to be royal or dead. So, either the Royal Mail know something we don't, or the rules are being bent slightly, because the Post Office have announced they will launch a set of Beatles' stamps next year. The five stamps will feature Beatles album covers - from 'With The Beatles', 'Revolver', 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band', 'Abbey Road' and 'Let It Be' - all of which feature photos or images of the band, none of whom are, to the best of my knowledge royal and two of whom are, I'm pretty sure, still alive.
Actually, it's not the first time the Post Office have broken their 'royal or dead' rule - a stamp released celebrating Freddie Mercury back in 1999 featured the very much alive Roger Taylor in the background - and, to be fair, I think the Royal Mail possibly formally altered the rule last year. But anyway, there's a good five months to go until these stamps will be released, I'm sure arrangements could be made to make the stamps adhere to the rule (by making Macca and Ringo royalty, obviously, I'm not suggesting we should kill them off).