The Royal Mint launches precious metal editions of the 50th Anniversary of the Death of Sir Winston Churchill 2015 UK £5
05 Jan 2015
The Royal Mint has announced that there are to be Silver Proof, Silver Proof Piedfort, Gold Proof and Platinum Proof Piedfort variants of the 50th Anniversary of the Death of Sir Winston Churchill 2015 UK £5 coin to commemorate the man who is regarded as one of the most renowned Britons of all time. The Brilliant Uncirculated edition was released in September 2014.
Winston Churchill was twice Britain’s Prime Minister, and twice helped the United Kingdom through the dark days of war. He was a great leader, soldier and artist, and as a writer he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was a Knight of the Garter, Companion to The Queen, and the first honorary citizen of the United States by Act of Congress. His thoughts and insights were respected both in and out of political office – this was the man who coined the term ‘Iron Curtain’ and warned the world of the grip of the Cold War. He was a brave soldier, even serving on the Western Front after vacating the prestigious post of First Lord of the Admiralty.
On the death of Winston Churchill in 1965 The Royal Mint issued a coin that became a classic, the essence of the great man captured by Oscar Nemon. In 2015, 50 years later, The Royal Mint has issued a second coin, this time designed by Mark Richards FRBS, honouring Sir Winston Churchill as an individual – the only statesman ever to be commemorated on two coins created in his honour. The portrait of Churchill is instantly recognisable on the new coin, a man who was larger than life, almost impossible to capture in the usual confines of coin design.
Designer of the 2015 £5 coin, Mark Richards FRBS says: “I wanted to capture something of Winston Churchill’s intensity, to create an active portrait, a sense of the man that you may have come away with had you met him. I thought the portrait created for the memorial coin in 1965 by Oscar Nemon couldn’t be bettered, so though I much admired it, I wanted to start afresh. I decided to create an image that is larger than the field of the coin – because this was a larger than life man, there was so much more to him than can ever be captured in one portrait”.
Shane Bissett, The Royal Mint’s Director of Commemorative Coin, Bullion and Medals said, “There can be few people around the world who have not heard of Sir Winston Churchill, even half a century after his death. Fifty years on, we remember a man who holds such a significant place in Britain’s history.”
The Coin and its designer Mark Richards FRBS, designer of the 2015 £5 coin, is a figure and portrait sculptor based in Shropshire. He read History of Art at Manchester University and trained in sculpture and drawing at The City and Guilds of London Art School. Mark worked for a number of sculpture companies before establishing himself as an independent sculptor in 1992. The designer created last year’s Queen Anne memorial coin and the £5 coin struck for the 90th birthday of the Duke of Edinburgh.