...Great Britain - Polymer Series With Signature Of Sarah John

Great Britain

(England, Scotland & Wales)

 

Bank of England

Currency : Pound Sterling (GBP)

 

Update: On the 3rd of September 2020, I posted the new Great Britain £20 polymer note. Here, I have uploaded two more notes of £10 and £50 polymer notes all bearing the signature of Sarah John.

 

Below is a £10 note issued with the signature of Sarah John. This £10 note is a reprint from the 2017 first issue. I have also now updated this note as per below. There is no chance in design for the £10 polymer note except it's printed with a new signature.

Signature - Sarah John (appointed since 2018)

Dimensions - 132mm x 69mm

 

Ten Pounds

Dated 2016Ⓒ, Queen Elizabeth The Second

Jane Austen (b.1775-1817)

Twenty Pounds

 

Posted here is the latest £20 note issued with the Chief Cashier's signature of Sarah John. Sarah John was appointed to the role on 01.06.2018. The £20 note is a new issue which was released to the public on 20.02.2020. This is the third of the polymer series since 2016 replacing the current paper banknotes in circulation.

 

As for the £20 note, and as expected, the main feature of the note on the front is the portrait of her majesty, Queen Elizabeth the Second together with the Bank of England building. On the larger transparent window, it's shows the Golden Margate lighthouse which was built in 1828 and Turner Contemporary (art gallery in Margate Kent, England) in blue. The design for the smaller window is based on Tintern Abbey in Monmouthshire.

On the back, it depicts an image of Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851 with a backdrop of one of his famous paintings, the Fighting Temeraire. This oil painting was completed in 1838. The portrait William Turner printed on this note came from a self-portrait oil painting completed in around 1799. William Turner was a romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist. He was born and lived in London all his life.

As mentioned earlier, the signature on the note belongs to Sarah John and this is the first time (£20) her signature appears on a banknote.

This £20 note is printed with the copyright©️ date of 2018.

Chief Cashier - Sarah John
Dimension - 138mm x 73mm
First Prefix - AA01

Twenty Pounds

nd2020 (©️2018), portrait of Queen Elizabeth the Second (portrait dated 1985, aged 59)

Reverse - Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851, the Fighting Temeraire painting

 

Fifty Pounds

 

This is the new £50 polymer note released on 23.06.2021. This is also the last of the polymer series issued by the Bank of England since 2016 and needless to say, England is the latest country to fully adopt the polymer banknote series. The Bank of England, which was established on 27.07.1694, has been issuing banknotes since 02.03.1797.

 

The main design of this note on the back features Alan Mathison Turing (b.1912-1954). Alan Turing was a brilliant mathematician, computer scientist and a code breaker too. If you have seen the movie called 'The Imitation Game' then you know who I am referring to. This note was released on 23.06.2021. Alan Turing was born on 21.06.1912. This note pays tribute to Alan Turing for breaking the Nazi Germany Enigma machine encryption code during the Second World War. The Enigma was a machine used by the Nazi to send secret messages securely and to make it even more difficult to crack, the German changed the cipher system daily. During the first few years of the war, Germany's U-boats (Wolfpack - a convoy of submarines) were very successful in sinking Allied ships in the Atlantic ocean, the Indian ocean and the Pacific ocean thus affecting Britain's war supplies from the United States and other countries in fighting the Nazi. The British government then formed a cryptography team that initially included Alan Turing to study and find a way to break the Enigma code. Alan Turing was not happy with some of the team members in the initial process, and he wrote to the then Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who then put Alan Turing in charge of the project. In July 1942, he successfully cracked the code which enabled the British to listen to the messages sent by the Germans, thus giving the British an advantage in the open seas. Alan Turing was awarded an OBE in 1945 for his wartime contribution. However, he was prosecuted in the early 1950s for being a homosexual as it was illegal then. He was arrested and found guilty of gross indecency and instead of going to prison, he accepted chemical castration as his punishment. On 07.06.1954 at the age of 41, he was found dead at his home. The official caused of death was suicide by cyanide poisoning. As not many people, even in the Great Britain would have heard of Alan Turing until the movie 'The Imitation Game' was made in 2014, I guess this note is to celebrate Alan Turing's achievement during the last world war and perhaps (maybe) an apology to him for prosecuting him for who he was. In 1967, the British parliament passed the law to decriminalise homosexual activities in the United Kingdom.

 

Whilst Alan Turing was credited with the breaking of the German Enigma code, it should be noted that it was the Polish mathematicians who worked out how to read the Enigma messages first and then shared the information with the British government.

As per all current series of banknotes, on the front it features the portrait of Queen Elizabeth the Second. Her portrait was taken in 1985 when she was 59 years old.

Signature - Sarah John (appointed since 2018)

Dimensions - 146mm x 77mm

First Prefix - AA01

 

 

Fifty Pounds

Dated 2020Ⓒ, Queen Elizabeth The Second

Alan Mathison Turing (b.1912-1954)