The Huffington Post report:

The Bank Of England has refused to reveal the two other figures it considered featuring on banknotes instead of Jane Austen and Winston Churchill.

After a Freedom of Information request from the Huffington Post UK, the Bank disclosed that “two other candidates” were considered by officials in April 2012, when they chose Churchill and Austen as “contingency characters” for future print runs of UK banknotes.

The Bank revealed in April that Churchill would start featuring on UK £5 banknotes from 2016, while then governor Mervyn King told MPs that Austen was “waiting in the wings” to be featured on UK £10 banknotes. The decision to include the 19th century author on £10 banknotes from 2017 was confirmed by King’s successor Mark Carney this June.

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Matthew Burgess
http://www.mattburgess.co
I am a journalist and author. I am a journalist at the UK edition of WIRED magazine. In 2015, my first book Freedom of Information: A Practical Guide for UK Journalists, was published. My second book Reed Hastings: Building Netflix, was published in March 2020. I created FOI Directory in 2012 and have maintained it in my spare time ever since.