Mark Mason has narrated this article for you to listen to.
Lewis Carroll used to travel with purses divided into separate compartments, each containing the exact number of coins he’d need for a particular transaction (train fare, porter, newspaper and so on). These days we have one bank card which gets tapped everywhere. The coinless society might be more convenient – but it’s also more boring. Coins are beautiful and fascinating.
For centuries they were the only way most people knew what their monarch looked like. Henry VIII was nicknamed ‘Coppernose’ because of the way the silver coating on copper coins rubbed away, starting with his nose. Even Oliver Cromwell put himself on the currency (as a Roman emperor wearing a laurel wreath). Since Charles II, monarchs have alternated the way they face. Only Edward VIII’s vanity threatened the pattern – he should have faced right, but said his left side was better. Thankfully, his coins were never issued. Each year’s Maundy money has the value in pence of the monarch’s age, and contains specially minted 3p and 4p coins, which are legal tender.
Britannia, currently on the £2 coin, was first employed by the Romans, depicted as a captive bowing down before their empire. But she eventually came to symbolise the country’s greatness – Queen Anne even issued coins with herself in the role. Gordon Brown removed Britannia, but David Cameron reinstated her, saying she should ‘never have been taken off in the first place’. Also still in place are the letters ‘DG’, for Dei gratia (‘By the grace of God’). In 1849 a new florin omitted them, and when a cholera epidemic broke out soon afterwards people blamed the ‘Godless florin’.
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