Churchill £5 note design to be unveiled

The full design of the new £5 banknote featuring Sir Winston Churchill will be unveiled this week.

The new fiver will be issued in September and in a break from the current paper notes it will be printed on polymer, a thin flexible plastic film, which is seen as more durable and more secure.

The £5 note will be unveiled at Blenheim Palace, Sir Winston's birthplace, on Thursday.

The current £5 note features prison reformer Elizabeth Fry and the announcement by the Bank of England in 2013 that she would be replaced with the former prime minister caused an outcry as it could have meant that, apart from the Queen, there would be no female faces on the UK's notes.

Thousands signed a petition in protest. It was subsequently announced that novelist Jane Austen would be the face of the new £10 note from 2017.

Like the new fiver, the new £10 and £20 notes will also be printed on polymer.

In April, the Bank announced that artist JMW Turner will appear on the next £20 banknote, due to be issued by 2020.