A Short History of Faces on Fivers

The Bank of England’s decision to replace famous Britons with British wildlife on the next generation of banknotes has prompted something of a backlash. It sounds, superficially, like a minor design refresh. In fact, it is something rather more interesting: a debate about national identity.

What appears on a banknote conveys a message. Every time we buy a newspaper, settle a restaurant bill or slip a note into a birthday card, we are handling one of the state's most ubiquitous pieces of public art. Currency is never simply a means of payment. It is also a statement about what a nation chooses to honour.

The celebration of historic figures is comparatively recent in the development of banknotes. For most of its history the Bank of England managed without portraits of anybody at all. Its earliest notes, issued from 1694, were handwritten promises to pay a named individual, redeemable over the counter; the nearest thing to a face on them was the flourish of a cashier's signature. Even Britannia, who presided over the design for the best part of two centuries, was less a person than an idea in a helmet: the nation allegorised. The practical business of the note evolved steadily around her: fixed denominations in the 18^th Century; the first fully printed notes in 1853. During the Second World War, there was a hurried change of colour after German counterfeiters became rather too accomplished at reproducing Pound notes.

It is easy to forget how recent our modern banknotes really are. The reigning monarch did not appear until 1960, when Her Majesty of blessed memory, Queen Elizabeth II, was engraved onto the £1 note for the first time. Historical figures, as opposed to reigning ones, had to wait a further decade. The Bank's first staff artist, Harry Eccleston, had hoped to put Sir Walter Raleigh on a ten-shilling note as early as 1964, but decimalisation intervened and Raleigh missed his moment. The honour fell instead to Shakespeare, who appeared on the reverse of the new £20 note in 1970, with the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet engraved behind him. It was the first of the ‘Historical Characters’ series, in which each denomination celebrated an individual whose achievements had helped shape Britain. The innovation served a practical purpose – combining portraits with intricate engraved scenes made notes harder to forge – but it also transformed their meaning. For the first time, British currency became a miniature national gallery.

Fifty-odd years and a stately procession of the great and the useful followed. The Duke of Wellington, Isaac Newton, and Florence Nightingale gave way in turn to Charles Dickens, Michael Faraday, Charles Darwin and the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry. Adam Smith arrived to reassure economists that capitalism had its poets too, and the engineers Matthew Boulton and James Watt shared a £50 note between them – a rare outbreak of banknote generosity extending to more than one person at a time. The most recent series, printed on the ghastly polymer that has replaced paper since 2016, gave us Winston Churchill, Jane Austen, J.M.W. Turner and Alan Turing. There have been arguments over omissions and campaigns for greater diversity, but the underlying principle has remained remarkably consistent: our banknotes should celebrate achievement.

That is the tradition now being replaced. In March the Bank announced that its next series would be themed around nature, and by June it had produced a shortlist of eighteen candidate species, from proud hedgehogs and stately kingfishers, to the mighty Atlantic puffin, for the public to vote on before the design is finalised later this year.

I am amongst those who lament that distinguished figures from history are to be replaced by an assortment of wildlife. No one would wish to belittle the artistic accomplishments of the great spotted woodpecker, or the salmon's stoic defence of the realm. However, there is something to be said for a currency that holds up a mirror to the national character rather than to the national countryside, however picturesque. A banknote passes through more hands and more lives than almost any other object we own; it seems a pity to spend that intimacy on a woodland scene when it might instead say something about who we are.

One suspects this is precisely why the Bank has found itself in difficulty. Choosing historical figures has become increasingly contentious. Every inclusion raises awkward questions about exclusion. Every shortlist provokes campaigns, petitions, and accusations of political bias. Trees, birds, and mammals have no such disadvantages. Pine martins, so far as we know, have never generated a Twitter storm.

Yet avoiding controversy is not necessarily the same thing as making a better choice.

The Bank itself has observed that banknotes are symbols of identity and nationhood. That is exactly why the historical characters series has endured for more than half a century. It recognised that currency should do more than facilitate commerce. It should say something about the society that issues it.

As a compromise, I suggest Mole, Ratty, Badger, and Mr Toad from Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows be depicted on the next series of banknotes. All four are both English wildlife and notable figures. What’s more, between them, they capture much of the national character: decency, sociability, solidity – and an alarming susceptibility to expensive fads.

It seems the ideal way to keep faces on our fivers without re-opening the argument about whose.