This is what the new polymer £5 note will look like
After months of waiting, the Bank of England has finally unveiled the new polymer £5 note that will come into circulation later this year.
The design features former prime minister Winston Churchill and will be the first of the new generation polymer notes that the Bank says will make paper money "cleaner, safer and stronger".
The design was unveiled by governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney at Blenheim Palace – Churchill's birth place – and comes with a glitzy website and video to mark the occasion.
Polymer notes last two-and-a-half times as long as the old notes and will save the Bank up to £100m in replacement costs.
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Artist JMW Turner was confirmed as the new face of the £20 note in April. Jane Austen will feature on the new £10 note.
The new note, which will come into circulation 13 September features:
- A portrait of Winston Churchill based on a photograph from 1941
- A view of Westminster and Big Ben, with the time frozen at 3pm – the time Churchill delivered his first speech as prime minister in 1940
- A picture of the Nobel Prize medal which Churchll was awarded in 1953 for literature
At the launch of the note, Mark Carney said:
"The New Fiver will commemorate the achievements of the only Prime Minister to win the Nobel Prize for literature and one of the greatest statesmen of all time – Sir Winston Churchill.
"As he himself said, ‘a nation that forgets its past has no future’. Our banknotes are repositories of the United Kingdom’s collective memory and like Churchill, our new polymer notes will stand the test of time."