I RECEIVED an interesting press release this week from one of the region’s Euro-MPs – not something that happens that often.

Lib Dem Diana Wallis emailed to inform me she was marking Yorkshire Day by writing to the Bank of England governor Mervyn King.

Her demand to the guardian of the nation’s purse-strings was simple – the next time he gets round to issuing a bank note, it ought to include a picture of someone from God’s Own County.

Mrs Wallis has looked into the matter and discovered that no Tyke has ever graced this country’s cash.

Looking at the list of those to feature on a £5, £10, £20 or £50, I see that Yorkshire is not the only under-represented sector.

The 13 people who have had the honour over the last 40 years include just two women – Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale – and not a single person from an ethnic minority.

Most of the lucky 13 are dead white males – men like William Shakespeare, Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.

And, as Mrs Wallis pointed out, none of the 13 hail from England’s biggest and best county.

The closest the White Rose comes to featuring on the back of a bank note is the Duke of Wellington, a famously proud Irishman but also someone whose name is inextricably linked to Yorkshire’s military.

Mrs Wallis believes that this historical slight against God’s Own County should be corrected by ensuring that Bradford lasses Emily, Charlotte and Anne Bronte feature on the next new set of bank notes.

I won’t pretend to be overly familiar with their work. As a teenager I was forced to read Victorian novels at school, an experience which put me off fiction for life.

One of the books I was subjected to was Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. I hope one day to be able to talk about the trauma of ploughing through page after page of Victorian drivel, but my therapist says it’s too soon.

I accept that other people – not least those working in Bradford’s tourism industry – have a slightly more positive view of the Bronte sisters.

But I don’t really see how writing a few novels that some people quite like really qualifies them to appear on a bank note. If we’re operating on that basis, why not put J K Rowling on the back of a fiver?

For me, there is only one nominee to be Yorkshire’s representative on a Bank of England note – as long as you ignore the 1974 reorganisation of local government.

He was born in Marton in the far north of the county, a place which now lies in Middlesbrough, but which is historically as much a part of Yorkshire as Marsden or Malton.

James Cook was born in God’s Own County in 1728 and died 50 years later half a world away in Hawaii.

His three extraordinary voyages around the Pacific in the 1760s and 1770s changed the world forever.

Captain Cook (funny how we always refer to him by his naval rank) was the first European to set foot on eastern Australia, the first to sail around New Zealand and the first to arrive in Hawaii.

He also charted much of the North American coastline. Indeed, his cartography skills were so exceptional that the New Zealand Navy continued to rely on maps which he drew right up until the 1990s.

In terms of increasing humanity’s understanding of the world, there are few who can rival the impact of Captain Cook.

He stands comparison with Newton and Darwin – men already honoured by the Bank of England.

Before Captain Cook, our understanding of the globe was hopelessly incomplete.

After him, the basic outline of the world had been established. Aside from Antarctica – which he came agonisingly close to seeing on one of his voyages – there were no more big bits of land left for Europeans to discover.

To quote a line I read years ago in a book about this most notable of Yorkshire people, ‘he made the world one.’

And that, I would humbly suggest, is a little more worthy of recognition than writing a few dreary novels about upper-class Victorians.