5 Pounds - Elizabeth II 5th portrait, William Wordsworth

Issued to mark the 250th anniversary of Wordsworth's birth, this piece appeared during a period when the Royal Mint's commemorative crown programme had grown so crowded that individual issues struggle to distinguish themselves. Wordsworth spent the bulk of his life in the Lake District, much of it at Rydal Mount, where he served as Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland — a government sinecure that freed him to write while drawing a steady official income, a biographical irony rarely acknowledged in his celebrations.