...Great Britain - King Charles lll Polymer Series Full Set Released 05.06.2024

 Great Britain

(England, Scotland & Wales)

 

Bank of England

Currency : Pound Sterling (GBP)

 

Here is a full set of four notes all released on 05.06.2024. Unlike the first polymer series, all these four notes were made available to the public on the same day. It has been a long time since the Bank of England has issued banknotes in full sets.

King Charles III became the King of the United Kingdom following the death of Queen Elizabeth II on 08.09.2022. Coronation was held on 06.05.2023. The last series of polymer notes with the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II were released between 2016 to 2021. I suppose the release of this series in full set is to honour the new monarch. If not, the Bank of England would just print new banknotes with the image of King Charles III as and when current stocks of banknotes are depleting. 

 

Since the introduction of the polymer series in 2016, this is the first reprint for the ₤5, third reprint for the ₤10, and the first reprints for both the ₤20 and ₤50 notes.

 

Apart from the new portrait of King Charles III, there are no changes to the main features or theme for this polymer series.

 

Five Pounds

King Charles III

 

Front - King Charles III (b.1948), a see-through window with Elizabeth Tower (Big Ben), Britannia;

 

Signature - Sarah John (Chief Cashier since 2018)

Watermark - Portrait of King Charles III on the see-through window

Dimensions - 126mm x 65.5mm

 

Back - Sir Winston Churchill 1874-1965, Palace of Westminster and Elizabeth Tower (Big Ben), 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature award medal, Blenheim Palace maze (Blenheim Palace - birthplace and ancestral home of Sir Winston Churchill);

 

Sir Winston Churchill 1874-1965

Ten pounds

King Charles III

Signature - Sarah John (Chief Cashier since 2018)

Watermark - Portrait of King Charles III on the see-through window

Dimensions - 133mm x 70mm

Back - Image of Jane Austen (b.1775 - 1817). Jane Austen, a novelist, was born in Steventon (Hampshire), south of England.  She is known as one of the most famous writers in English literature and she has only written 6 full-length novels. Her novels were made into TV series, films, theater plays and radio adaptations. She died at a very young age of 41.

 

Jane Austen (b.1775 - 1817)

 

Twenty Pounds

King Charles III

Signature - Sarah John (Chief Cashier since 2018)

Watermark - Portrait of King Charles III on the see-through window

Dimensions - 140mm x 73.5mm

 

Back - An image of Joseph Mallord William Turner (b.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.

 

Joseph Mallord William Turner (b.1775-1851)

 

Fifty Pounds

King Charles III

Signature - Sarah John (Chief Cashier since 2018)

Watermark - Portrait of King Charles III on the see-through window

Dimensions - 147mm x 78mm

 

Back - 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. 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' 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.

 

Alan Mathison Turing (b.1912-1954)