LONDON – Could Indian born film director and producer Ismail Merchant become the next face of Britain’s 20 pound bank note?
The Bank of England has just finished asking the British public to nominate artists who they believe helped to shape British thought.
Around 30,000 nominations have been received.
Merchant was born in Mumbai in 1936 as Ismail Noormohamed Abdul Rehman. He was a producer and director, known for highly acclaimed films like The Remains of the Day (1993), A Room with a View (1985) and Howards End (1992). He met his partner James Ivory at a screening of Ivory’s documentary The Sword and the Flute (1959) in New York City. Merchant and Ivory formed Merchant Ivory Productions in May 1961. Merchant died on May 25, 2005 in London at the age of 68 following surgery for abdominal ulcers.
He has now been nominated along with greats like Francis Bacon, Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, John Nash, Richard Attenborough, William Blake and Charlie Chaplin.
The Bank said on Monday that the chosen character will be announced in 2016 and the new £20 note is expected to enter circulation in the next 3-5 years.
The two-month public nomination period to determine who should appear on the next £20 note officially closed on July 19, 2015.
Bank of England’s Banknote Character Advisory Committee will now consider all eligible nominations and produce a shortlist of 3 – 5 names. These will then go to the Governor for a final decision.
Chief cashier, Victoria Cleland said “I am delighted with the number of nominations we have received, and appreciative of the public’s engagement in this new initiative. The fact that so many visual artists have been put forward underlines the extent of British achievement in the visual arts and reinforces why this field deserves to be recognised on the next £20 note”.
The names include architects, artists, ceramicists, craftspeople, fashion designers, filmmakers, photographers, printmakers and sculptors.
The Bank has featured characters on banknotes since 1970.
The Bank announced recently that the next £5 and £10 banknotes will be printed on polymer, a thin flexible plastic film, rather than on the cotton paper used for notes currently in issue.
The first polymer note will be the £5 note featuring Sir Winston Churchill and will be issued in 2016. It will be followed around a year later by a polymer £10 note featuring Jane Austen.
