Women to dominate new £5 and £10 bank notes in Scotland
LONDON -- Women will feature on both the £5 and the £10 notes from a Scottish bank for the first time when new designs come into circulation.
Author Nan Shepherd was revealed as the Royal Bank of Scotland's choice for the £5 note Monday, and she'll be joining scientist Mary Somerville who was recently voted by the public as the new face of the £10 note.
It's the first time women have featured on any note from the bank.
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Shepherd published several novels based in north east Scotland in the 1920s and 1930s. However, she's best known for her nonfiction book, The Living Mountain, which was written in the 1940s and inspired by her time walking in the Cairngorm Mountains but not published until 1977. She died in 1981.
Robert Macfarlane, writer and Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge said that Shepherd "was a blazingly brilliant writer, a true original whose novels, poems and non-fiction broke new ground in Scottish literature."
She'll be on notes later this year, while Somerville, who was a prolific science writer in the 19th century and was chosen for the new £10 note, will appear in 2017.
The back of the £5 note will feature two mackerel to represent Scotland's fishing industry and an excerpt from a Sorley MacLean poem, "The Choice."
The £10 reverse, meanwhile, while depict two otters and an excerpt from Norman MacCaig's "Moorings."
Three institutions can issue their own notes in Scotland: Clydesdale, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Bank of Scotland. In England, the Bank of England is the only one allowed to produce the paper.
Clydesdale featured a woman, missionary Mary Slessor, on their £10 note in 1997.
Earlier this month, abolitionist Harriet Tubman was announced for the next $20 bill in the U.S.
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Tim Chester was Senior Editor, Real Time News in Los Angeles. Before that he was Deputy Editor of Mashable UK in London. Prior to joining Mashable, Tim was a Senior Web Editor at Penguin Random House, helping to relaunch the Rough Guides website and other travel brands. He was also a writer for Buzzfeed, GQ and The Sunday Times, covering everything from culture to tech and current affairs. Before that, he was Deputy Editor at NME.COM, overseeing content and development on the London-based music and entertainment site. Tim loves music and travel and has combined these two passions at festivals from Iceland to Malawi and beyond.
