In your pocket, 100 years of RAF and women’s votes
SPECIAL coins are being released this year to mark the 100th anniversaries of the end of the First World War and women being given the right to vote.
The Royal Mint has unveiled several designs for 2018 which also include one that marks 100 years since the formation of the RAF and one celebrating Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley 200 years ago.
A new £2 coin will commemorate the classic science fiction novel, which anticipated genetic engineering and transplant surgery. The 100 years since the Representation of the People Act, when women over 30 were given the vote, along with servicemen over 19 and other men over 21, is commemorated by a 50p coin.
The Act was granted royal assent in February 1918 and the first elections were held in December.
The First World War armistice in November that year will be remembered in another £2 coin design.
It features a quote from one of Wilfred Owen’s most moving poems Strange Meeting – ‘the truth untold, the pity of war’. Owen was killed in action on November 4, 1917.
The 100th anniversary of the formation of the Royal Air Force will also be featured on a £2 coin design.
Dr Kevin Clancy, director of the Royal Mint Museum, said: ‘This is an important year for the Royal Mint, as among our 2018 coin themes are the centenaries of three key events that have shaped the country as we know it today … whilst 200 years of Mary Shelley’s Dr Frankenstein are marked in a £2 coin.’