The new plastic tenner featuring the image of author Jane Austen is to be revealed today on the bicentenary of her death.
The new £10 note will be officially unveiled at Winchester Cathedral by the Bank of England this afternoon.
The launch will be the first time the public can view and even touch the new note before it is introduced into circulation in September.
Austen wrote ground-breaking books such as Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice which satirises the stuffy social order of the Georgian and Regency upper and middle classes.
She died in Winchester in 1817, aged just 41, and was buried in the north aisle of the cathedral.
The banknote will be made of the same polymer as the current £5 which includes the controversial animal product tallow.
The Bank of England has said it is working on a new material which does not contain tallow.
Alex Vickers, who runs The Peppercorn vegetarian cafe, on Trinity Street, said she was disappointed that the notes would contain animal products. But she said the notes and current fivers would be welcome at her cafe.
Will the new £10 notes be valuable? As in, worth more than £10?
Well, possibly, if the release of the new £5 notes is anything to go by.
When they were first put into circulation, some of the new notes had distinguishing features that made them extremely collectible.
Notes with particular serial numbers ended up fetching tens of thousands of pounds on auction sites.
So it’ll definitely be worth taking a close look at the first new tenners that come your way in a few months’ time.
