Bank of England note issues England Mark Carney announced that a newly designed £10 banknote, featuring novelist Jane Austen, would be issued in 2017. The campaign for a woman to appear celebrated the choice as "a brilliant day". The date of issue was subsequently confirmed as 14 September 2017. Like the £5 note featuring Churchill, the new £10 note is made from polymer rather than cotton paper. It depicts: £20 notes, in white, appeared in 1725 and continued to be issued until 1943. They ceased to be legal tender in 1945. After World War II, the £20 denomination did not reappear until 1970, when the
Legal tender Minister of Finance. The history of bank notes was considerably more complex. In 1840, the Union Bank of Australia started issuing bank notes under provisions of British law, but these were not automatically legal tender. In 1844, ordinances were passed making the Union Bank banknotes legal tender and authorising the government to issue debentures in small denominations, thus creating two sets of legal tender. These debentures were circulated but were traded at a discount to their face value because of distrust of the colonial government by the settler population. In 1845, the Ordinance was disallowed by the British Colonial office