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50 Pence - Elizabeth II Benjamin Britten, Silver Piedfort
| Issuer | Royal Mint |
|---|---|
| Year | 2013 |
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| Reference(s) | Sp#H37 |
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| Reverse description | The reverse, designed by artist Tom Phillips, presents a striking typographic composition in which excerpts from Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem — set to music by Benjamin Britten — are arranged across the field in multiple horizontal registers incorporating two musical stave lines. The words BLOW BUGLE BLOW appear prominently at the top in stylised lettering, with BENJAMIN and BRITTEN displayed in bold block capitals across the central registers separated by the smaller inscription COMPOSER·BORN 1913. The phrase SET THE WILD ECHOES FLYING occupies the lower field in a contrasting smaller script, all set against a textured ground evoking manuscript notation. The overall design commemorates the centenary of Britten's birth and reflects the composer's profound relationship with English poetry and song. |
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| Mint | Royal Mint |
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| Additional information |
The Britten 50p was issued to mark the centenary of the composer's birth on 22 November 1913. Britten remains the only British composer to have appeared on a circulating 50p, though this piedfort is strictly a collector issue — struck at double the standard flan thickness in .925 silver, a format the Royal Mint has used since the early 1980s to differentiate premium collector strikes from standard proofs.
Britten's relationship with officialdom was complicated enough that a state commemoration of this kind would have seemed unlikely during his lifetime. His homosexuality, then criminal, and his conscientious objection during the Second World War made him a persistent outsider to the establishment he was eventually, somewhat ironically, ennobled into as Baron Britten in 1976.