Eleven years ago, physicist Michael Faraday's face was struck off the £20 note in favour of composer Sir Edward Elgar. The £20 note is the UK's most common and most copied banknote, and the men at the Mint claimed that, while Faraday's smooth jowls were a gift to counterfeiters, the moustachioed Elgar would present more of a challenge to would-be forgers.
But now Elgar has lost pole position to Scottish free-market advocate Adam Smith, having received his marching orders in March at the beginning of a gradual withdrawal. By the end of June, all of the Elgar £20 notes will have been consigned to the shredder and either used as landfill or incinerated. That will leave Smith as the only face on the 1.5 billion (£30bn) £20 notes in circulation.
The public can make their own suggestions to the Bank of England for new faces (noteworthy names have included Sir Terry Wogan and Robbie Williams), but Governor Mervyn King is said to have personally chosen Smith for the new £20 note, introduced in 2007.
"The Bank is in a privileged position to acknowledge the enduring contribution of its most talented citizens to the advancement of society," King said at the time. "Our choice of Adam Smith reflects the keen importance we attach to that position and the place of the notes themselves as a record of Britain's heritage."
The Smith note is bright purple, with high-security details such as a larger holographic strip, microlettering and UV features. The keener eyed may also have spotted that Smith is clean shaven. Anti-counterfeiting advances mean hirsuteness is no longer a prerequisite.
blog comments powered by
