title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: Walker then entered a period of self-confessed artistic decline, during which he spent five years making records "by rote, just to get out of contract" and consoling himself with drink. His next album, "'Til the Band Comes In" (1970), showed a pronounced split between its two sides. Side A featured original material (mostly co-written with new manager Ady Semel) while side B consisted almost entirely of cover versions. Subsequent releases saw Walker revert to cover versions of popular film tunes and a serious flirtation with country music. "The Moviegoer" (1972), "Any Day Now" (1973), "Stretch" (1973), and "We Had It All" (1974) feature no original material whatsoever.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: In the 2006 documentary "", Walker describes these as his "lost years" in terms of creativity. He has also confessed to having surrendered his direction due to outside pressure:


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: By the mid-1970s, Walker's career was at its nadir, and he joined back up with John Maus and Gary Leeds to revive the Walker Brothers in 1975. Their first comeback single, a cover of Tom Rush's song "No Regrets", from the album of the same title reached number 7 in the UK Singles Chart, some months after its release. However, the parent album peaked at only number 49 in the UK Albums Chart. The two singles from the next album "Lines" (its title track, which Scott regarded as the best single the group ever released, and "We're All Alone") both failed to chart, and the album fared no better.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: With the imminent demise of their record label, the Walkers collaborated on an album of original material that was in stark contrast to the country-flavoured tunes of the previous 1970s albums. The resulting album, "Nite Flights", was released in 1978 with each of the Brothers writing and singing their own compositions. The opening four songs were Scott's, the final four John's, while the middle pair were by Gary. Scott's four songs – "Nite Flights", "The Electrician", "Shut Out", and "Fat Mama Kick" – were his first original compositions since "'Til the Band Comes In" and represented his first steps away from the MOR image and sound he had cultivated since the commercial failure of "Scott 4". The extremely dark and discomforting sound of Scott's songs, particularly "The Electrician", was to prove a forerunner to the direction of his future solo work.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: In spite of a warm critical reception (with his contributions particularly lauded), sales figures for "Nite Flights" were ultimately as poor as those of "Lines". The supporting tour saw the band concentrating on the old hits and ballads and ignoring the songs from their new record. Apparently now fated for a stagnant career on the revival circuit, the Walker Brothers lost heart and interest, compounded by Scott's increasing reluctance to sing live. By the end of 1978, now without a record deal, the group drifted apart again and Scott Walker entered a three-year period of obscurity and no releases.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: In 1981, interest in Scott Walker's work was stimulated by the compilation "", containing tracks selected by Julian Cope, which reached number 14 on the UK Independent Chart. Building on the critical and sales momentum of the compilation, Walker subsequently signed with Virgin Records.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: In 1984, Scott Walker released his first solo album in ten years, "Climate of Hunter". The album furthered the complex and unnerving approach Walker had established on "Nite Flights". While based loosely within the field of 1980s rock music (and featuring guest appearances by contemporary stars Billy Ocean and Mark Knopfler), it had a fragmented and trance-like approach. Many of its eight songs lacked either titles or easily identifiable melody, with only Walker's sonorous voice as the link to previous work. Like "Nite Flights" before it, "Climate of Hunter" was met with critical praise but low sales. Plans to tour were made but never came to fruition. A second album for Virgin was rumoured to be in the works (with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois producing) but was abandoned after early sessions. Soon afterwards, Walker was dropped by the label.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: Walker spent the late 1980s away from music, with only a brief cameo appearance in a 1987 Britvic TV advert (alongside other 1960s pop icons) to maintain his profile. He did not return to public attention until the early 1990s when his solo and Walker Brothers work was critically reappraised again. During this period Walker's first four studio albums were issued on CD for the first time and the compilation album "No Regrets – The Best of Scott Walker and The Walker Brothers 1965–1976" hit number 4 on the UK Albums Chart. Walker's own return to current active work was gradual and cautious. In 1992 he co-wrote and co-performed (with Goran Bregović) the single "Man From Reno" for the soundtrack of the film "Toxic Affair". Having signed to Fontana Records, he began work on a new album. In the meantime David Bowie covered Scott's song "Nite Flights" on his "Black Tie White Noise" album, which also contained the Walker inspired 'You've Been Around'.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: "Tilt" was released in 1995, developing and expanding the working methods explored on "Climate of Hunter". Variously described as "an anti-matter collision of rock and modern classical music", as "Samuel Beckett at La Scala" and as "indescribably barren and unutterably bleak... the wind that buffets the gothic cathedrals of everyone's favorite nightmares", it was more consciously avant-garde than its predecessor with Walker now revealed as a fully-fledged modernist composer. Although Walker was backed by a full orchestra again, this time he was also accompanied by alarming percussion and industrial effects; and while album opener "Farmer in the City" was a melodic piece on which Walker exercised his familiar ballad voice, the remaining pieces were harsh and demandingly avant-garde.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: Lyrically, subject matter included the life and murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini (and his relationship with Ninetto Davoli), cockfighting, the First Gulf War, a conflation of the trials of Adolf Eichmann and Caroline of Brunswick, and a man talking to the corpse of Che Guevara.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: In 1996, Walker recorded the Bob Dylan song "I Threw It All Away" under the direction of Nick Cave for inclusion in the soundtrack for the film "To Have and to Hold". In 1998, in a rare return to straightforward balladeering, he recorded the David Arnold song "Only Myself to Blame" (for the soundtrack of the Bond film "The World Is Not Enough") and also wrote and produced the soundtrack for the Léos Carax film "Pola X", which was released as an album. In 1999, he wrote and produced two songs for Ute Lemper on her album "Punishing Kiss", credited as N.S. Engel. (One of these, "Lullaby", is only available as a bonus track on the Japanese version of the CD.)


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: In 2000, Walker curated the London South Bank Centre's annual summer live music festival, Meltdown, which has a tradition of celebrity curators. He did not perform at Meltdown himself, but wrote the music for the Richard Alston Dance Project item "Thimblerigging". The following year he served as producer on Pulp's 2001 album "We Love Life" (whose track "Bad Cover Version" includes a mocking reference to the poor quality of "the second side of "'Til The Band Comes In"").


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: In October 2003, Walker was given an award for his contribution to music by "Q" magazine, presented by Jarvis Cocker of Pulp. Walker received a standing ovation at the presentation. This award had been presented only twice before, the first time to Phil Spector, and the second to Brian Eno. The release of a retrospective box set, "5 Easy Pieces", comprising five themed discs spanning Walker's work with the Walker Brothers, his solo career (including film soundtrack work), and the two pieces composed for Ute Lemper, followed soon after.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: On May 8, 2006, Scott Walker released "The Drift", his first new album in 11 years. Critical acclaim for the album garnered a Metacritic score of 85.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: In both composition and atmosphere, "The Drift" was a continuation of the surreal, menacing, partially abstract approach displayed on "Climate of Hunter" and "Tilt". It featured jarring contrasts between loud and quiet sections; instrumentation was similar to "Tilt" in the use of rock instruments and a large orchestra, but the album also interpolated unnerving sound effects such as the distressed braying of a donkey, a demoniac Donald Duck impression, and (during a recording sequence captured on film) an orchestral percussionist punching a large cut of raw meat. Lyrical subjects included torture, disease, the relationship and eventual shared death of Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci, and a conflation of the 9/11 attacks with a nightmare shared by Elvis Presley and his dead twin brother Jesse. In contemporary interviews, Walker appeared more at ease with media attention, revealing a wish to produce albums more frequently and hinting at significant changes in the nature of his own material if and when it suits him. Although he mentioned the possibility of touring again with a compact, five-piece band in an interview with "The Wire" this never transpired.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: In June 2006, "Mojo" and radio honored Scott Walker with the MOJO Icon Award: "Voted for by "Mojo" readers and Mojo4music users, the recipient of this award has enjoyed a spectacular career on a global scale". It was presented by Phil Alexander.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: A documentary film, "", was completed in 2006 by New York film director Stephen Kijak ("Cinemania" and "Never Met Picasso"). Interviews were recorded with David Bowie (executive producer of the film), Radiohead, Sting, Gavin Friday and many musicians associated with Walker over the years. The World Premiere of "Scott Walker: 30 Century Man" took place as part of the 50th London Film Festival. When "The Independent" released its list of "Ten must-see films" at the 50th London Film Festival, "Scott Walker: 30 Century Man", was among them. A documentary on Walker containing a substantial amount of footage from the film was shown on BBC1 in May 2007 as part of the "Imagine..." strand, presented by Alan Yentob.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: Walker released "Darkness" as part of "Plague Songs", an album of songs for the "Margate Exodus" project, a re-telling of the Book of Exodus, the story of Moses and his search for the Promised Land. Ten singer-songwriters were commissioned by Artangel to write and record a song inspired by one of the ten biblical plagues. Walker's evocation of "Darkness" appears as the ninth.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: On September 24, 2007, Walker released "And Who Shall Go to the Ball? And What Shall Go to the Ball?" as a limited, never-to-be-re-pressed edition. The 24-minute instrumental work was performed by the London Sinfonietta with solo cellist Philip Sheppard as music to a performance by London-based CandoCo Dance Company. The recording is currently unavailable. From November 13 to 15, 2008, "Drifting and Tilting: The Songs of Scott Walker" was staged at The Barbican, in London. It comprised eight songs, two from "Tilt" – "Farmer in the City" and "Patriot (a single)" – and the rest from "The Drift": "Cossacks Are", "Jesse", "Clara (Benito's Dream)", "Buzzers", "Jolson and Jones" and "Cue". Each song was presented in a music-theatre manner, with the vocal parts taken by a number of singers, including Jarvis Cocker, Damon Albarn and Dot Allison. Walker collaborated with Bat for Lashes on the song "The Big Sleep" from her 2009 album "Two Suns". He wrote the score for the ROH2 production of Jean Cocteau's 1932 play "Duet for One", which was staged in the Linbury Studio in June 2011.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: Walker's final solo album, "Bish Bosch", was released on December 3, 2012 and was received with generally favourable reviews. In 2014, Walker collaborated with the experimental drone metal duo Sunn O))) on "Soused", which was released on October 21, 2014. A year later, Walker composed the score for Brady Corbet's film "The Childhood of a Leader"; this was followed in 2018 by the score for Corbet's film "Vox Lux", also featuring music by Australian singer-songwriter Sia.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: As a record producer and guest performer, Walker worked with a number of artists and bands, including Pulp, Ute Lemper, Sunn O))), and Bat for Lashes.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: Walker died at the age of 76 in London on March 22, 2019. His death was announced three days later by his record company 4AD, which announced cancer as the cause of death and called him "a unique and challenging titan at the forefront of British music". Tributes included those from Thom Yorke, Marc Almond, and Neil Hannon.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: Initially working as an interpreter of other people's songs, Scott Walker had developed his own songwriting skills by the heyday of the Walker Brothers and by the time of his first solo album in 1967. In a 1984 interview he spoke of difficulty in writing songs: "I don't write songs for pleasure. I can only write when I have to – like I'm under contract, or to finish an album."


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: Walker's late 1960s and 1970s work was relatively conventional. On a superficial level, it followed the melodic orchestral pop template used by singers such as Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams and Jack Jones – mainstream artists whose career path he was initially expected to follow. Crucial differences came via the more avant-garde orchestrations of his arrangers (primarily Angela Morley (at the time known as Wally Stott), Peter Knight and Reg Guest) and by Walker's own approach to lyrics, which involved a cinematic mise-en-scene approach once described as "unsettling short stories, all the more creepy for their delicate orchestral backdrop." As his solo career progressed, Walker began working political themes into his lyrics. Among the first of these was "The Old Man's Back Again (Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime)" (from "Scott 4"). Further references came via his dramatisation of the work of a CIA torturer on "The Electrician" ("Nite Flights").


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: Walker's next artistic development as a songwriter came when he jettisoned his remaining conventional lyrical concerns along with his remaining connections to formal popular song (and, by extension, the easy-listening ballads which he had been famous for). The "New York Times" described Walker as arriving at "the point where he barely needs melody anymore. Instead, there are whirring synthesizers, great orchestral blocks of sound, noises of unknown provenance." Despite the radical alteration of his methods, Walker commented that he did not consider himself a "composer" in the established sense of the term: "I think of myself as a songwriter, but I agree they are maybe not traditional songs. I know what people mean, but what else can you call them?"


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: Walker described his lyrical technique (assembling short blocks of text containing images that are sometimes seemingly unconnected and disparate from each other) as being similar to "a general, assembling troops on the battlefield." "The Wire" has noted that the short blocks of white-on-black text presented in the CD insert for "The Drift" is reflective of this. The roots of this compositional technique are apparent as early as the Scott Walker tracks on "Nite Flights" – the lyrics insert for the album clearly feature the technique, albeit with a black text on a white background.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: Walker stated in the documentary film "" and in numerous interviews that for his entire career he had not listened to any of his own work after completion, either due to exhaustion from the project or self-criticism.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: In 2018, Walker published "Sundog", a book of selected lyrics. The book is divided into six sections: "The 60s", "Tilt", "The Drift", "Bish Bosch", "Soused", and "New Songs". The foreword to the book was written by Irish novelist Eimear McBride.


title: Scott Walker (singer)

text: Many artists have expressed their admiration for Walker or cited him as an influence, including David Bowie, Alex Turner, Marc Almond, Bauhaus, Goldfrapp, Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy, Julian Cope (who compiled the "" compilation in 1981), Jarvis Cocker, Anohni, Thom Yorke and Radiohead, Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree, and Mikael Åkerfeldt of Opeth (particularly expressed in their joint project Storm Corrosion), Tim Bowness of No-Man, Leonard Cohen, Efterklang, East India Youth, Kevin Hufnagel, Ihsahn, Russell Mills, Dennis Rea, John Baizley of Baroness, and Brian Eno.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: Sheldon Gary Adelson (; August 4, 1933 – January 11, 2021) was an American businessman, investor, political donor and philanthropist. He was the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Las Vegas Sands Corporation, which owns the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, and the parent company of Venetian Macao Limited, which operated The Venetian Las Vegas and the Sands Expo and Convention Center before selling the properties in early 2022. He owned the Israeli daily newspaper "Israel Hayom", the Israeli weekly newspaper "Makor Rishon", and the American daily newspaper the "Las Vegas Review-Journal".


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: Adelson created the Adelson Foundation in 2007, a private charity focusing on healthcare and support of Israel and the Jewish people. He was a major contributor to Republican Party candidates and was often dubbed a "kingmaker" due to the size and frequency of his donations. He and his wife Miriam Adelson were Donald Trump's largest donors, providing the largest donation to Trump's 2016 campaign, his presidential inauguration, his defense fund against the Mueller investigation into Russian interference, and the 2020 campaign. He was also a major backer of Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In September 2017, Adelson was listed by "Forbes" as having a fortune of US$35.7 billion, and as of September 2020 "Forbes" listed his net worth as US$29.8 billion.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: Adelson was born on August 4, 1933, and grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, the son of Sarah (née Tonkin) and Arthur Adelson. He was Jewish. His father's family was of Ukrainian Jewish and Lithuanian Jewish ancestry. His mother immigrated from England, and Adelson said that his grandfather was a Welsh coal miner. His father was a taxi driver, and his mother ran a knitting shop.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: He began his business career at the age of 12 when he borrowed $200 from his uncle () and purchased a license to sell newspapers in Boston. In 1948, at the age of 15, he borrowed $10,000 () from his uncle to start a candy vending-machine business. He attended the City College of New York, but did not graduate. He attended trade school in a failed attempt to become a court reporter, then joined the army.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: After being discharged from the army, he established a business selling toiletry kits, then started another business, De-Ice-It, which marketed a chemical spray that cleared ice from windshields. In the 1960s, he started a charter tour business. He soon became a millionaire, although by his thirties he had built and lost his fortune twice. Over the course of his business career, Adelson created almost 50 businesses, making him a serial entrepreneur.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In the late 1970s, Adelson and his partners developed the COMDEX trade shows for the computer industry, beginning in 1979. It was one of the largest computer trade shows in the world through much of the 1980s and 1990s.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In 1995, Adelson and his partners sold the Interface Group Show Division, including the COMDEX shows, to SoftBank Group of Japan for $862 million; Adelson's share was over $500 million.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In 1988, Adelson purchased the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas for $110 million (approximately ). The next year, he and his partners built the Sands Expo and Convention Center, then the only privately owned and operated convention center in the U.S.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In 1991, while honeymooning in Venice with his second wife, Miriam, Adelson came up with the idea for a mega-resort hotel. He razed the Sands and spent $1.5 billion to construct The Venetian, a Venice-themed resort hotel and casino, which opened on May 3, 1999.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In the late 2000s, Adelson and the company built a casino resort in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. It is one of five stand-alone casinos that were awarded a slots license by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board in 2006. The casino opened May 22, 2009.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In 2010, during the Great Recession, Adelson told "The Wall Street Journal" "If it were today, we probably wouldn't have started it."


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: Adelson led a project to bring Las Vegas Sands casinos to Macau. The Sands Macao became China's first Las Vegas-style casino when it opened in May 2004. He recovered his initial $265-million investment in one year and, because he owned 69% of the stock, he increased his wealth when he took the stock public in December 2004. Following the opening of the Sands Macao, Adelson's personal wealth multiplied more than fourteen times.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In August 2007, Adelson opened the $2.4 billion Venetian Macao Resort Hotel on Cotai and announced that he planned to create a massive, concentrated resort area he called the Cotai Strip, after its Las Vegas counterpart. Adelson said that he planned to open more hotels under brands such as Four Seasons, Sheraton, and St. Regis. His Las Vegas Sands planned to invest $12 billion and build 20,000 hotel rooms on the Cotai Strip by 2010.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: Adelson's company was reportedly under federal investigation over alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act relating to payments made to a Macau lawyer. In 2015, Sands agreed to pay a $9 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which included no admission of wrongdoing.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In May 2006, Adelson's Las Vegas Sands was awarded a hotly contested license to construct a casino resort in Marina Bay, Singapore. The new casino, Marina Bay Sands, opened in 2010 at a rumored cost of $5.5 billion.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In 2010, when it opened, at a total cost of S$8 billion including land cost, the Marina Bay Sands (MBS) Complex of Singapore was the most expensive building in the world, ranking over the new development of World Trade Towers in Manhattan of New York and the Burj Khalifa of Dubai.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: MBS Singapore includes stores at "The Shoppes", an ultraluxury indoor Venetian canal-lined exclusive shopping belt with tenants such as Ferrari, Chanel, the Theatre of Marina Bay and Convention Center for Sands Live concert series, multiple swimming pools, a rooftop infinity pool, night clubs in Maison pavilions on newly constructed mini islands, and 2,500 luxury hotel rooms.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In 2007, Adelson made an unsuccessful bid to purchase the Israeli newspaper "Maariv". When this attempt failed, he proceeded with parallel plans to publish a free daily newspaper to compete with "Israeli", a newspaper he had co-founded in 2006 but had left. The first edition of the new newspaper, "Israel Hayom", was published on July 30, 2007. On March 31, 2014, Adelson received the go-ahead from a Jerusalem court to purchase "Maariv" and the conservative newspaper "Makor Rishon". In 2016, Adelson's attorney announced that he does not own Israel Hayom, but that it is owned by a relative of his.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: According to a Target Group Index (TGI) survey published in July 2011, "Israel Hayom", which unlike all other Israeli newspapers is distributed for free, became the number-one daily newspaper (on weekdays) four years after its inception. This survey found that "Israel Hayom" had a 39.3% weekday readership exposure, "Yedioth Ahronoth" 37%, "Maariv" 12.1%, and "Haaretz" 5.8%. The "Yedioth Ahronoth" weekend edition was still leading with a 44.3% readership exposure, compared to 31% for the "Israel Hayom" weekend edition, 14.9% for "Maariv", and 6.8% for "Haaretz". This trend was already observed by a TGI survey in July 2010.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In 2011, the Israeli press said that Adelson was unhappy with the coverage on Israeli Channel 10 alleging he had acquired a casino license in Las Vegas inappropriately through political connections. The channel apologized after Adelson threatened a lawsuit. This led to the resignations of the news chief, Reudor Benziman; the news editor, Ruti Yuval; and the news anchor, Guy Zohar, who objected to the apology. After two months of deliberations, the Israeli Second Authority for Television and Radio ruled that although there were some flaws in the manner in which the apology had been conducted, the decision to apologize had been correct and appropriate.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In December 2015, Adelson purchased the "Las Vegas Review-Journal" newspaper. The purchase was made through a limited liability company called News + Media Capital Group LLC and his involvement with the deal was initially kept secret. A week after the purchase was announced, three "Review-Journal" reporters revealed that the deal had been orchestrated by Adelson's son-in-law Patrick Dumont on Adelson's behalf. Commentators described the $140 million paid for the paper as "lavish" and as a dramatic overpayment, and speculated that the move was a power play to further Adelson's business or political agendas.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: Within a few weeks the paper's editor stepped down in a "voluntary buyout". In January 2016, a set of editorial principles were drawn up and publicized to ensure the newspaper's independence and to deal with possible conflicts of interest involving Adelson's ownership. In February Craig Moon, a veteran of the Gannett organization, was announced as the new publisher and promptly withdrew those principles from publication. He also began to personally review, edit, and sometimes kill stories about an Adelson-promoted proposal for a new Las Vegas football stadium. In the months since, reporters say that stories about Adelson, and particularly about an ongoing lawsuit involving his business dealings in Macau, have been heavily edited by top management.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: Many reporters and editors left the newspaper citing "curtailed editorial freedom, murky business dealings and unethical managers." All three reporters who originally broke the story about Adelson's ownership have left. Longtime columnist John L. Smith, who had often written about Adelson and had been unsuccessfully sued for libel by him, resigned after he was told he could no longer write anything about Adelson.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In a panel discussion at Yeshiva University on October 22, 2013, Adelson said that the United States must get tougher on the issue of Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program. He said: "You pick up your cell phone and you call somewhere in Nebraska and you say 'OK, let it go' and so there's an atomic weapon goes over, ballistic missiles in the middle of the desert that doesn't hurt a soul, maybe a couple of rattlesnakes and scorpions or whatever". He explained that, after a show of force and a threat to also drop a nuclear bomb on Tehran, the U.S. should then say: if "You [Iran] want to be peaceful, just reverse it all and we will guarantee that you can have a nuclear power plant for electricity purposes, energy purposes." Adelson's spokesman told reporters that Adelson "was obviously not speaking literally" about using an atomic bomb in the desert, and that he was "using hyperbole to make a point that ... actions speak louder than words".


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: During the Suen trial, Bill Weidner, the president of Adelson's Las Vegas Sands company, testified about a telephone conversation between Adelson and his friend then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) about a bill proposed by Representative Tom Lantos (D) that would have prevented the U.S. Olympic Committee from voting in favor of the Chinese bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics. A few hours later, DeLay called back and told Adelson he could tell the mayor of Beijing "this bill will never see the light of day". The resolution did not pass. Adelson testified in court that the demise of the resolution "resulted from the press of other legislation, [not from] a deliberate move by DeLay to help his benefactor."


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: Fighting cannabis legalization was a personal passion of Adelson, whose son Mitchell died of an overdose of heroin and cocaine. Mitchell used cocaine and heroin from an early age.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: Adelson believed cannabis is a gateway drug. Andy Abboud, vice president of Las Vegas Sands, has stated that "Pro-marijuana folks have awakened a sleeping giant in Sheldon and Miriam Adelson".


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: At the November 2017 conference of the Israeli-American Council (IAC), Adelson declared that the organization should become primarily a political lobbying group on Israel-related issues. In contrast to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which supports a two-state solution and continued aid to the Palestinians, Adelson charted a course for IAC to oppose both of these positions; Adelson himself opposed a two-state solution. Israeli journalist Chemi Shalev said that IAC had not intended to become a political pressure group and that Adelson had "hijacked" it for his "hard-right agenda".


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: Adelson fought against internet-based gambling in his later life. Despite the legalization, and acceptance from many Las Vegas Casino CEOs, Adelson poured money into candidates wanting to overturn state legislation that legalizes online gambling. In early 2015, Adelson publicly backed a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. The legislation, named the Restore America's Wire Act, has been met with mixed reviews by the Republican Party.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: Adelson and his wife, Miriam Adelson, were presented with the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the Smithsonian Institution on March 25, 2008.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: Adelson received the Chairman's Award from the Nevada Policy Research Institute, a think tank in Las Vegas, for his efforts to advance free market principles in Nevada.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In 2014, Adelson was named to CNBC's list of 200 people who have transformed business over the last 25 years.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: According to "The New Yorker", Adelson began making major contributions to the Republican National Committee following clashes with labor unions at his Las Vegas properties.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: "The New Yorker" article also quoted Shelley Berkley, a Nevada Democratic Party congresswoman, with whom Adelson had a long feud. She worked for him in the 1990s as vice-president of legal and governmental affairs, and said Adelson told her that "old Democrats were with the union and he wanted to break the back of the union, consequently he had to break the back of the Democrats". "The Boston Globe" said that Adelson "waged some bitter anti-union battles in Las Vegas". Berkley is further quoted in "The New Yorker" article as saying that Adelson "seeks to dominate politics and public policy through the raw power of money".


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In February 2012, Adelson told "Forbes" magazine that he was "against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections. But as long as it's doable I'm going to do it. Because I know that guys like Soros have been doing it for years, if not decades. And they stay below the radar by creating a network of corporations to funnel their money. I have my own philosophy and I'm not ashamed of it. I gave the money because there is no other legal way to do it. I don't want to go through ten different corporations to hide my name. I'm proud of what I do and I'm not looking to escape recognition."


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In 2005, Adelson and his wife each contributed $250,000 to the second inauguration of George W. Bush. President George W. Bush appointed the Adelsons to serve on the Honorary Delegation to accompany him to Jerusalem for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel in May 2008.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: Adelson was the principal financial backer of Freedom's Watch, a now-defunct political advocacy group founded to counter the influence of George Soros and Democratic-leaning lobby groups such as MoveOn.org. "Almost all" of the $30 million Freedom's Watch spent on the 2008 elections came from Adelson.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In 2010, Adelson donated $1 million to American Solutions for Winning the Future, a political action committee (PAC) supporting Republican former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. In December 2011, during Gingrich's bid for the U.S. presidency, Adelson spoke favorably of controversial remarks Gingrich had made about Palestinians, saying "read the history of those who call themselves Palestinians, and you will hear why Gingrich said recently that the Palestinians are an invented people." Adelson donated to U.S. Senate and House of Representatives candidates.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: During the 2012 Republican Party presidential primaries, Adelson first supported Newt Gingrich and then the eventual nominee Mitt Romney. Altogether he spent $92 million supporting losing candidates during the 2012 United States presidential election cycle.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: On January 7, 2012, Adelson bolstered Gingrich's then-faltering campaign with a $5-million donation to the pro-Gingrich super PAC Winning Our Future. By the next day, the super PAC had reserved more than $3.4 million in advertising time in the South Carolina primary, which included production and distribution of a half-hour movie that portrayed Gingrich's political rival Mitt Romney as a "predatory corporate raider". On January 23, Adelson's wife, Miriam, contributed an additional $5 million to the same organization with instructions to use it to advance a "pro-Newt message". Adelson told "Forbes" that he was willing to donate as much as $100 million to Gingrich. He also donated $5 million to the right-leaning super PAC Congressional Leadership Fund and over $60,000 to the Republican National Committee.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In June 2012, Adelson donated $10 million to the pro-Romney PAC Restore Our Future. In July, Adelson attended a Romney fundraiser held in Jerusalem. Adelson joined Woody Johnson, John Rakolta, Paul Singer, and several dozen other contributors on the trip. According to "Bloomberg Businessweek", as of July Adelson had given Republicans more than $30 million for the 2012 election cycle.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: Romney believed that the People's Republic of China should have been pressured to drop its presumptively low fixed exchange rate policy; according to Bloomberg, Adelson would have benefitted financially in U.S. dollar terms through his interest in Chinese casinos if the Chinese yuan were to have appreciated.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: Early in 2014, Adelson donated $2.5 million to the Drug Free Florida Committee, the political committee trying to defeat Florida's Right to Medical Marijuana Initiative which would legalize medical cannabis in that state. Later in 2014, Adelson donated an additional $1.5 million to the No On 2 campaign. He believed that cannabis is a gateway drug.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: According to a 2014 "Washington Post" report, Adelson's strategy for the 2016 United States presidential election was to support a mainstream candidate capable of winning the presidency. In March 2014 Adelson was set to hold one-on-one chats with possible candidates Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Scott Walker, and John Kasich during the spring meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition held at Adelson's hotel and casino The Venetian Las Vegas. During the December 2015 Republican debate held at that same venue, Adelson held one-on-one meetings with several of the candidates prior to the start of the debate, including front runner Donald Trump. The bidding to become Adelson's favorite, and ultimately receive tens of millions in financial support, was informally called "The Adelson Primary". On May 13, 2016, he endorsed Trump for president, and pledged as much as $100 million to support his campaign. Adelson was later described as a Trump partisan.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In October 2016, Adelson donated one million dollars to the campaign against Massachusetts ballot question 4 the Massachusetts Legalization, Regulation and Taxation of Marijuana Initiative which legalized marijuana for personal use. Adelson also donated $1,500,000 towards the unsuccessful effort to thwart the 2016 Florida medical Marijuana Legalization Initiative.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: Adelson sat out the 2016 Republican primaries, with some early indicators at the beginning of 2016 interpreted as showing that Adelson favored Trump. In May 2016, explaining his reasons for officially endorsing Donald Trump's presidential bid, Adelson cited the importance of CEO experience in a presidential nominee.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: For the 2018 United States elections, Adelson donated approximately $113 million to the Republican Party through various conservative political action committees.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: On January 31, 2019, ABC News reported that Adelson and his wife Miriam had contributed $500,000 to the Patriot Legal Expense Fund Trust, which was set up in 2018 to assist aides of President Trump under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. The contributions are the Trust's largest to date.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: It was estimated Adelson would donate $200 million to Trump and the GOP for the 2020 election cycle. Given a call to Adelson by Trump in early August complaining that Adelson had not done enough for him, there was speculation that the amount of a donation could be affected. On October 15, 2020, Adelson gave $75 million to a Trump PAC, in a late push for reelection. In the second half of October 2020, Adelson and his wife gave a further $35 million to three super-PACs supporting the Republican Party and Trump's re-election. PACs to which the Adelsons donated in the 2020 cycle included Preserve America and the Senate Leadership Fund.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: On September 23, 2016, Adelson announced a $25 million donation to Trump's presidential campaign, as part of a $65 million donation to the Republican electoral campaign for 2016. This rendered Adelson by far the biggest donor in either party (Republicans or Democrats) in the 2016 election cycle. It also makes him by far the largest donor to Donald Trump's White House bid. Adelson was the largest donor to Trump's inaugural celebrations, with a $5 million donation to the celebrations.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: According to federal records, from 2010 through 2020, Adelson and his wife donated more than $500 million to the Republican party campaigns and super PACs.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: Since 2007, the Adelson Family Foundation has made contributions totaling $140 million to Birthright Israel, which finances Jewish youth trips to Israel. He also donated $5 million to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces in 2014. Adelson donated over $25 million to The Adelson Educational Campus in Las Vegas to build a high school. In 2006, Adelson contributed $25 million to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: Adelson also funded the private, Boston-based Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Medical Research Foundation. This foundation initiated the Adelson Program in Neural Repair and Rehabilitation (APNRR) with $7.5 million donated to collaborating researchers at 10 universities.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In the 1970s, Sheldon Adelson lived in Massachusetts with his wife, Sandra, and her three children, Mitchell, Gary, and Shelley, whom Sheldon adopted when they were young. The couple divorced in 1988.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: Adelson met Miriam Farbstein Ochshorn, a medical doctor, on a blind date the following year; they married in 1991. She was previously married to a Tel Aviv physician, Dr. Ariel Ochshorn, with whom she had two daughters. Miriam "Miri" Farbstein was born in Mandatory Palestine in 1945, to parents that fled Poland before the Holocaust and settled in the city of Haifa. After earning a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology and Genetics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a medical degree from Tel Aviv University's Sackler Medical School, she went on to become the chief internist in an emergency room at Tel Aviv's Rokach (Hadassah) Hospital. In 1993, she founded a substance abuse center and research clinic there, and in 2000, the couple opened the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Research Clinic in Las Vegas.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: A June 2008 profile in "The New Yorker" detailed several controversies involving Adelson. In 2008 Richard Suen, a Hong Kong businessman who had helped Adelson make connections with leading Chinese officials in order to obtain the Macau license, took Adelson to court in Las Vegas alleging he had reneged on his agreement to allow Suen to profit from the venture. Suen won a $43.8 million judgement; in November 2010, the Nevada Supreme Court overturned the judgment and returned the case to the lower court for further consideration. In the 2013 retrial, the jury awarded Suen a verdict for $70 million. The judge added another $31.6 million in interest, bringing the total judgment against Adelson to $101.6 million. Adelson was in the process of appealing again. Adelson faced another trial over claims by three alleged "middlemen" in the deal who are suing for at least $450 million.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In February 2013, the Las Vegas Sands, in a regulatory filing, acknowledged that it had likely violated federal law that prohibits the bribing of foreign officials. Allegedly, Chinese officials were bribed to allow Adelson to build his Macau casino.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: Adelson successfully sued the London "Daily Mail" for libel in 2008. The newspaper had accused him of pursuing "despicable business practices" and having "habitually and corruptly bought political favour". Adelson won the libel case, which was described as "a grave slur on Mr Adelson's personal integrity and business reputation," and he won a judgment of approximately £4 million, which he said he would donate to London's Royal Marsden Hospital.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In August 2012, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), after being threatened with a libel suit, apologized and withdrew two blog posts that claimed Adelson had donated "Chinese prostitution money" to Republicans. Another organization, the National Jewish Democratic Council, posted on their website that Adelson "personally approved" of prostitution at his Macau resorts. Adelson sued for libel, but a federal judge dismissed the suit in September 2013, ordering Adelson to pay the NJDC's legal fees.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In 2007, Adelson's estimated wealth was $26.5 billion, making him the third-richest person in the United States according to "Forbes". and $26 billion for 2008.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In 2008, the share prices of the Las Vegas Sands Corp. plunged. In November 2008, Las Vegas Sands Corp. announced it might default on bonds that it had outstanding, signaling the potential bankruptcy of the concern. Adelson lost $4 billion in 2008, more than any other American billionaire. In 2009, his net worth had declined from approximately $30 billion to $2 billion, a drop of 93%. He told ABC News "So I lost $25 billion. I started out with zero ...[there is] no such thing as fear, not to an entrepreneur. Concern, yes. Fear, no". In the "Forbes" 2009 world billionaires list, Adelson's ranking dropped to No. 178 with a net worth of $3.4 billion, but by 2011, after his business had recovered, he was ranked as the world's 16th-richest man with a net worth of $23.3 billion.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In 2013, Adelson earned a top ranking on "Forbes" Annual "Biggest Winner" List, his dramatic growth a result of the success of his casinos in Macau and Singapore, adding an estimated $15 billion to his net worth during the year. In 2013, Adelson was worth $37.2 billion according to "Forbes", and as of December 2014, his net worth was $30.4 billion.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: Adelson owned a fleet of private jets through Las Vegas Sands. On January 2, 2017, Adelson's Airbus A340-500 jet set a record for the Ben Gurion International Airport by making the longest flight ever leaving the airport by flying nonstop to Honolulu, Hawaii, by way of the Arctic Ocean.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: In 2001, Adelson was diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy, which restricted his ability to stand and walk.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: On February 28, 2019, Las Vegas Sands announced that Adelson was receiving treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The news was disclosed after a Sands attorney claimed Adelson was too weak to sit for a deposition in a court case involving Richard Suen. Sands spokesman Ron Reese said the side effects of Adelson's medical treatment had "restricted his availability to travel or keep regular office hours” but had not “prevented him from fulfilling his duties as chairman and CEO” of Las Vegas Sands.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: On January 11, 2021, Adelson died at his home in Malibu, California, at the age of 87, after long-term illnesses.


title: Sheldon Adelson

text: On January 14, 2021, Adelson's body arrived in Israel. His coffin was draped in U.S. and Israeli flags and was on display at Ben Gurion Airport, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to pay his respects. Adelson was buried the next day, in a small private ceremony on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.


title: Eric Carmen

text: Eric Howard Carmen (born August 11, 1949) is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, and keyboardist. He was first known as the lead vocalist of the Raspberries. He had numerous hit songs in the 1970s and 1980s, first as a member of the Raspberries (who had a million-selling single with "Go All the Way"), and then with his solo career, including hits such as "All by Myself", "Never Gonna Fall in Love Again", "She Did It", "Hungry Eyes", and "Make Me Lose Control".


title: Eric Carmen

text: From a family of Russian Jewish immigrants, Carmen was born in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, and grew up in Lyndhurst, Ohio. He has been involved with music since early childhood. By the age of two, he was entertaining his parents with impressions of Jimmy Durante and Johnnie Ray. By age three, he was in the Dalcroze Eurhythmics program at the Cleveland Institute of Music. At six years old, he took violin lessons from his aunt Muriel Carmen, who was a violinist in the Cleveland Orchestra. By age 11, he was playing piano and dreaming about writing his own songs. The arrival of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones altered his dream slightly. By the time he was a sophomore at Charles F. Brush High School, Carmen was playing piano and singing in rock bands including the Fugitives, the Harlequins, the Sounds of Silence, and the Cyrus Erie.


title: Eric Carmen

text: Though classically trained in piano, Carmen became a self-taught guitarist. At 15, he started guitar lessons, but when his teacher's approach did not fit with what he wanted, he decided to teach himself. He bought a Beatles chord book and studied guitar for the next four months.


title: Eric Carmen

text: Carmen became serious about being a musician while attending John Carroll University. He joined a band named Cyrus Erie, which recorded several commercially unsuccessful singles for Epic Records. Cyrus Erie guitarist Wally Bryson had been playing with friends Jim Bonfanti and Dave Smalley in one of Cleveland's most popular bands, the Choir, which scored a minor national hit in 1967 with the single "It's Cold Outside".


title: Eric Carmen

text: When Cyrus Erie and the Choir disbanded at the end of the 1960s, Carmen, Bryson, Bonfanti, and Smalley teamed up to form Raspberries, a rock and roll band that was among the chief exponents of the early 1970s power pop style. Carmen was the lead singer of the group, and wrote or co-wrote all their hit songs. In 1975, after the breakup of Raspberries, he started his solo career, de-emphasizing harder rock elements in favor of soft rock and power ballads.


title: Eric Carmen

text: In 2004, Carmen, along with original Raspberries members Jim Bonfanti, Wally Bryson, and Dave Smalley, re-formed the band for a series of sold-out live performances in cities across the United States. On that tour, the Raspberries recorded a live album of their hits at The House of Blues on Sunset Strip, in Hollywood. Both the show and album received critical acclaim. Carmen himself has stated that he planned to write new harder-edged songs for the band to perform in the same vein as those that the Raspberries performed in the 1970s.


title: Eric Carmen

text: Carmen's first two solo singles were chart hits in 1976. Both were built around themes by Sergei Rachmaninoff. The first of these singles, "All by Myself" – based on Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 – hit number 2 in the United States, and number 12 in the United Kingdom where it was his only charting hit. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc by the R.I.A.A. in April 1976. The follow-up single, "Never Gonna Fall in Love Again" – based on the main theme of the third movement of Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2 – reached number 11 on the "Billboard" Hot 100, and hit number one on the US Adult Contemporary Chart, as well as number nine on the Cash Box chart. In the UK, Dana took it to number 31 and in Australia Mark Holden took it to number 13. Those songs featured on his 1975 self-titled debut album, along with "That's Rock and Roll", a number 3 hit single for singer Shaun Cassidy. The album made number 21 on the "Billboard" album chart and was certified gold in 1977 for sales of more than 500,000 copies.


title: Eric Carmen

text: Carmen's second album, "Boats Against the Current", came out in the summer of 1977 and received mixed reviews. It featured backup players such as Burton Cummings, Andrew Gold, Bruce Johnston and Nigel Olsson. The album spent 13 weeks in the Billboard Album chart, peaking number 45. It also produced the Top 20 single "She Did It", but the title track only managed to scrape the bottom of the chart. The title track was later covered by Olivia Newton-John on her album "Totally Hot". A third single taken from the album, "Marathon Man", became his first solo single not to hit the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart. However, Shaun Cassidy again made the Top 10 in 1978 with Carmen's "Hey Deanie". For several weeks in the fall of 1977, Carmen had three compositions charting concurrently on the "Billboard" Hot 100, Cassidy's two big hits and Carmen's own "She Did It".


title: Eric Carmen

text: Carmen followed up with two more albums. Despite declining chart fortunes, the single "Change of Heart" broke into the Pop Top 20, and reached number 6 at AC in late 1978, with this hit also being covered by Samantha Sang on her "Emotion" LP, but in 1980, after the release of the album "Tonight You're Mine" and single "It Hurts Too Much" (number 75 Billboard Top 100) he temporarily withdrew from the music industry.


title: Eric Carmen

text: Four years later, Carmen resurfaced on Geffen Records in 1985 with a second self-titled album and a sizeable comeback hit "I Wanna Hear It from Your Lips". The single hit the Adult Contemporary Top 10 as well as the Pop Top 40. The follow-up single, "I'm Through with Love", also climbed the "Billboard" Hot 100 and reached the Top 20 of the Adult Contemporary chart. Another track from the album, "Maybe My Baby", later became a Country hit for Louise Mandrell reaching number 8 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart. "I Wanna Hear It from Your Lips" was also covered by Mandrell only managing to peak at 35 on the same chart.


title: Eric Carmen

text: In 1987, Carmen's contribution to the hit movie "Dirty Dancing", "Hungry Eyes", hit number 2 on the Adult Contemporary Chart and also returned him to the Pop Top 10. "Reason To Try", a further contribution to the "" compilation album of songs recorded for the Seoul Summer Olympics, kept Carmen's profile high in 1988, during which the nostalgic "Make Me Lose Control" also returned him to the number one position on the Adult Contemporary chart – where it stayed for three straight weeks – as well as number 3 on Billboard's Hot 100.


title: Eric Carmen

text: The year 2000 saw the stateside release of "I Was Born to Love You", which had been released in 1998 only in Japan as "Winter Dreams". Carmen eschewed the use of a band on the recording, playing most of the instruments and programming the drum parts himself. The album did not find a large audience, but Carmen has continued to enjoy success placing songs with other artists over the years. In 2000, he toured with Ringo Starr and His All Starr Band.


title: Eric Carmen

text: On December 24, 2013, the first new recording in over 15 years by Carmen titled "Brand New Year" was released. The track, written and recorded in November/December 2013 in Ohio and Los Angeles, was issued via a gratis download by Legacy Recordings as a special "Christmas gift", to herald the March 2014 arrival of a 30 track career retrospective entitled "The Essential Eric Carmen.".


title: Eric Carmen

text: Carmen moved from Los Angeles back to Gates Mills in northeast Ohio in the 1990s. In 2016, Carmen married former newscaster Amy Murphy.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Sterling banknotes are the banknotes in circulation in the United Kingdom and its related territories, denominated in pounds sterling (symbol: £; ISO 4217 currency code: GBP; traditional abbreviation: Stg.).


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Sterling banknotes are official currency in the United Kingdom, Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, British Antarctic Territory, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, and Tristan da Cunha. One pound is equivalent to 100 pence. Three British Overseas Territories also have currencies called pounds which are at par with the pound sterling.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The Bank of England has a legal monopoly of banknote issuance in England and Wales but, for historical reasons six banks, three in Scotland and three in Northern Ireland also issue their own banknotes that circulate in the system and may be used for cash transactions anywhere in the United Kingdombut the law requires that the issuing banks hold a sum of Bank of England banknotes (or gold) equivalent to the total value of notes issued. Versions of the pound sterling issued by Crown dependencies and other areas are regulated by their local governments and not by the Bank of England.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The pound sterling banknotes in current circulation consist of Series G Bank of England notes in denominations of £5, £10, £20 and £50. The obverse of these banknotes all feature the portrait of Elizabeth II originally introduced in 1990. Over time, banknotes featuring Elizabeth II will be phased out and replaced with notes featuring a portrait of King Charles III. Select banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland also issue their own banknotes at par with Bank of England issues. Scottish and Northern Irish notes may be rejected as payment in England by merchants unfamiliar with them, and are likely difficult or impossible to exchange outside Britain.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Until the middle of the 19th century, privately owned banks in Great Britain and Ireland were free to issue their own banknotes. Paper currency issued by a wide range of provincial and town banking companies in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland circulated freely as a means of payment.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: As gold shortages affected the supply of money, note-issuing powers of the banks were gradually restricted by various Acts of Parliament, until the Bank Charter Act 1844 gave exclusive note-issuing powers to the central Bank of England. Under the Act, no new banks could start issuing notes; and note-issuing banks gradually vanished through mergers and closures. The last private English banknotes were issued in 1921 by Fox, Fowler and Company, a Somerset bank.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The Bank Notes (Scotland) Act was passed the following year, and to this day, three retail banks retain the right to issue their own sterling banknotes in Scotland, and four in Northern Ireland.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Notes issued in excess of the value of notes outstanding in 1844 (1845 in Scotland) must be backed up by an equivalent value of Bank of England notes.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Following the partition of Ireland, the Irish Free State created an Irish pound in 1928; the new currency was pegged to sterling until 1979. The issue of banknotes for the Irish pound fell under the authority of the Currency Commission of the Republic of Ireland, which set about replacing the private banknotes with a single Consolidated Banknote Issue in 1928. In 1928, a Westminster Act of Parliament reduced the fiduciary limit for Irish banknotes circulating in Northern Ireland to take account of the reduced size of the territory concerned.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Elizabeth II was not the first British monarch to have her face on UK banknotes. George II, George III and George IV appeared on early Royal Bank of Scotland notes and George V appeared on 10/– and £1 notes issued by the British Treasury between 1914 and 1928. However, prior to the issue of its Series C banknotes in 1960, Bank of England banknotes generally did not depict the monarch. Today, notes issued by Scottish and Northern Irish banks do not depict the monarch.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The monarch is depicted on banknotes issued by the Crown dependencies and on some of those issued by overseas territories.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The wide variety of sterling notes in circulation means that acceptance of different sterling banknotes varies. Their acceptance may depend on the experience and understanding of individual retailers, and it is important to understand the idea of "legal tender", which is often misunderstood (see section below).


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Legal tender is a narrow technical concept which relates to the settlement of debt, and it has little practical meaning for many everyday transactions such as buying goods in shops. But it does apply, for example, to the settlement of a restaurant bill, where the food has been eaten prior to demand for payment and so a debt exists. Essentially, any two parties can agree to any item of value as a medium for exchange when making a purchase (in that sense, all money is ultimately an extended form of barter). If a debt exists that is legally enforceable and the debtor party offers to pay with some item that is not legal tender, the creditor may refuse such payment and declare that the debtor is in default of payment; if the debtor offers payment in legal tender, the creditor is required to accept it or else the creditor is in breach of contract. Thus, if in England party A owes party B £1,000 and offers to pay in Northern Irish banknotes, party B may refuse and sue party A for non-payment; if party A provides Bank of England notes, party B must acknowledge the debt as legally paid even if party B would prefer some other form of payment.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Banknotes do not have to be classed as legal tender to be acceptable for trade; millions of retail transactions are carried out each day in the UK using debit cards and credit cards, none of which is a payment using legal tender. Equally, traders may offer to accept payment in foreign currency, such as the euro, yen, or US dollars. Acceptability as a means of payment is essentially a matter for agreement between the parties involved. Where a transaction is subject to VAT, the transaction must be converted to sterling for tax purposes.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Millions of pounds' worth of sterling banknotes in circulation are not legal tender, but that does not mean that they are illegal or of lesser value; their status is of "legal currency" (that is to say that their issue is approved by the British parliament) and they are backed up by Bank of England securities.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Bank of England notes are the only banknotes that are legal tender in England and Wales. Scottish and Northern Irish banknotes are not legal tender anywhere, and Jersey, Guernsey and Manx banknotes are only legal tender in their respective jurisdictions. Although these banknotes are not legal tender in the UK, this does not mean that they are "illegal" under English law, and creditors and traders may accept them if they so choose. Traders may, on the other hand, choose not to accept banknotes as payment, as contract law across the United Kingdom allows parties not to engage in a transaction at the point of payment if they choose not to.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: In Scotland and Northern Ireland, no banknotes, not even those issued by local banks, are legal tender. They have a similar legal standing to cheques or debit cards, in that their acceptability as a means of payment is essentially a matter for agreement between the parties involved, although Scots law requires any reasonable offer for settlement of a debt to be accepted.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Until 31 December 1984, the Bank of England issued £1 notes, and these notes did have legal tender status in Scotland and Northern Ireland while they existed. The Currency and Bank Notes Act 1954 defined Bank of England notes of less than £5 in value as legal tender in Scotland. Since the English £1 note was removed from circulation in 1988, this leaves a legal curiosity in Scots law whereby there is no paper legal tender in Scotland. HM Treasury has proposed extending legal tender status to Scottish banknotes. The proposal has been opposed by Scottish nationalists who claim it would reduce the independence of the Scottish banking sector.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Most of the notes issued by the note-issuing banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland have to be backed by Bank of England notes held by the issuing bank. The combined size of these banknote issues is well over a billion pounds. To make it possible for the note-issuing banks to hold equivalent values in Bank of England notes, the Bank of England issues special notes with denominations of one million pounds ("Giants") and one hundred million pounds ("Titans") for internal use by the other banks.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Banknotes are no longer redeemable in gold, and the Bank of England will only redeem sterling banknotes for more sterling banknotes or coins. The contemporary sterling is a fiat currency which is backed only by securities; in essence IOUs from the Treasury that represent future income from the taxation of the population. Some economists term this "currency by trust", as sterling relies on the faith of the user rather than any physical specie.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The following table lays out the various banks or authorities which are authorised to print pound sterling banknotes, organised by territory:


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: In 1921, the Bank of England gained a legal monopoly on the issue of banknotes in England and Wales, a process that started with the Bank Charter Act of 1844 when the rights of other banks to issue notes was restricted.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The bank issued its first banknotes in 1694, although before 1745 they were written for irregular amounts, rather than predefined multiples of a pound. It tended to be times of war, which put inflationary pressure on the British economy, that led to greater note issue. In 1759, during the Seven Years' War, when the lowest-value note issued by the Bank was £20, a £10 note was issued for the first time. In 1793, during the war with revolutionary France, the Bank issued the first £5 note. Four years later, £1 and £2 notes appeared, although not on a permanent basis. Notes did not become entirely machine-printed and payable to the bearer until 1855.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: At the start of the First World War, the government issued £1 and 10/– Treasury notes to replace the sovereign and half-sovereign gold coins. The first coloured banknotes were issued in 1928, and were also the first notes to be printed on both sides. The Second World War saw a reversal in the trend of warfare creating more notes: to combat forgery, higher denomination notes (some as high as £1,000) were removed from circulation.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: There are no Welsh banknotes in circulation; Bank of England notes are used throughout Wales. The last Welsh banknotes were withdrawn in 1908 upon the closure of the last Welsh bank, the North and South Wales Bank. An attempt was made in 1969 by a Welsh banker to revive Welsh banknotes, but the venture was short-lived and the notes did not enter general circulation, surviving today only as a collectors' curiosity.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: All Bank of England notes issued since Series C in 1960 depict Elizabeth II, who was monarch at the time, on the obverse side, in full view facing left; her image also appears as a hidden watermark, facing right; recent issues have the anti-photocopier security EURion constellation around.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: In September 2022, following the death of Elizabeth II, speculation arose as to precisely when the Bank of England would begin replacing banknotes with her portrait on for ones with the portrait of Charles III. After the end of the mourning period, the Bank announced that the portrait of the King intended for use on its banknotes would be released by the end of 2022, and that new notes would be in circulation by mid-2024. New banknotes with the portrait of the King would circulate alongside existing banknotes with the image of the late Queen for an unspecified period of time.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The Bank of England has a set of criteria for choosing characters for banknotes – initially, it looks at who has previously featured, to allow for a reflection of the diversity of society. It does not accept fictional characters, or any living people with the exception of the reigning monarch, but instead aims for individuals that are both widely admired, and are considered to have made an important contribution to British society and culture. The final criterion is that the individual has an easily recognisable portrait available for use. This does not need to be a painting, as, up to 2022, there have been two sculptures and two photographs used.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: In the mid-1960s, shortly after the introduction of Series C, the Bank of England proposed to introduce a new banknote series featuring people from British history. In addition to enhancing the appearance of banknotes, the complexity of the new designs was intended to make counterfeiting harder. The task of designing the new Series D notes was given to the Bank's new in-house designer, Harry Eccleston, who not only designed the notes themselves, but also created three individual portraits of the Queen. It was initially envisaged that all of the denominations of notes then in circulation would be issued under Series D. To that end, a Series D 10/– note was designed, featuring Sir Walter Raleigh, which would become the 50 pence note upon decimalisation, and intended to be the first of the new series to be issued. However, inflation had shorted the estimated lifespan of the note to roughly five months in circulation. As a result, the new note was not introduced, and the 10/- note was instead replaced with a 50p coin in 1969. Instead, the £20 note was the first Series D note to enter circulation in 1970, with William Shakespeare on the reverse.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Runaway inflation through the 1970s also considerably eroded the lifespan of the £1 note, and the Series D £1 note, featuring Sir Isaac Newton, was discontinued in 1984, having been replaced by a coin the year before, and was officially withdrawn from circulation in 1988. Nonetheless, all banknotes, regardless of when they were withdrawn from circulation, may be presented at the Bank of England where they will be exchanged for current banknotes. Other banks may also decide to exchange old banknotes, but they are under no obligation to do so.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: When Series E was introduced in 1990, a new portrait of the Queen was commissioned based on photographs by Don Ford, one of the Bank of England's photographers. In this portrait, intended for all of the Series E banknotes, the Queen is shown wearing the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara, Queen Alexandra's cluster earrings and Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee necklace. Two different Series E sets were produced, each with a different set of historical figures - the first Series E banknote was the £5 featuring George Stephenson, followed by the £20 (Michael Faraday), the £10 (Charles Dickens) and the £50 (Sir John Houblon). The three lower denominations were replaced by the Series E (Variant) series, featuring Elizabeth Fry, Charles Darwin and Sir Edward Elgar; the £50 note was not replaced during this period.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The Series F banknotes consists of the £20 note introduced in 2007 and the £50 introduced in 2011; no £5 or £10 notes were designed for this series. Its launch was announced on 29 October 2006 by the Governor of the Bank of England. These notes were withdrawn on 30 September 2022, after which they are only exchangeable for Series G banknotes.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The first of these new notes, a £20 note, features the Scottish economist Adam Smith, the first Scot to appear on an English note. (The first non-Englishman, Anglo-Irish Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, appeared on the Series D £5 in 1971.) Smith also features on £50 notes issued by the Clydesdale Bank. Previous issues of Bank of England £20 notes were known to have suffered from a higher incidence of counterfeiting (276,000 out of 290,000 cases detected in 2007) than any other denomination. The note, which also includes enhanced security features, entered circulation on 13 March 2007.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The next new Series F banknote, the £50 note, entered circulation on 2 November 2011. It is the first Bank of England banknote to feature two Britons on the reverse: James Watt (another Scotsman) and Matthew Boulton.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: In 2011, the Bank of England announced plans to begin introducing a new set of banknotes, which were to become Series G. As part of the initial consultation, the bank obtained opinion on whether the planned new banknotes should continue to be made from banknote paper, or if they should be polymer. Having made the decision to switch to polymer banknotes, the first note of Series G, the polymer £5 note, entered circulation on 13 September 2016; the £10 note on 14 September 2017; the £20 note on 20 February 2020; and the £50 on 23 June 2021. The material used to make the banknotes is biaxially oriented polypropylene.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: In April 2013, the Bank of England announced that its next planned new note issue, intended to be the £5 note in 2016, would feature former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The selection of Churchill to replace Elizabeth Fry raised some debate about the representation of women on British banknotes, with critics raising concerns that Bank of England notes would portray exclusively male figures, other than Elizabeth II who appears on every sterling coin and Bank of England note. In July 2013 it was announced that the Series F £10 note design would bear a portrait of 19th century author Jane Austen. In 2015, the Bank announced that they were accepting suggestions from the public for a figure from the visual arts to appear on the £20 note to replace Adam Smith, with the new note to be introduced in 2020. In April 2016, it was announced that J. M. W. Turner had been selected to appear on the new £20 note.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: In September 2013 the Bank of England opened a period of public consultation about the introduction of polymer, or plastic, banknotes, which would be introduced into circulation from 2016 if the proposals were supported. The polymer notes will be "around 15% smaller" than the notes being replaced. Following the consultation, in December 2013, the Bank confirmed that plastic or polymer notes would be brought into circulation in 2016 with the introduction of the £5 note featuring Sir Winston Churchill. A spokesman for LINK, the company that operates many of the cash machines in the United Kingdom, said there would need to be significant investment as machines would need to be altered to fit the polymer £5 banknotes, which would be smaller than the previous ones. The Jane Austen polymer £10 note went into circulation in September 2017. The £20 shows J. M. W. Turner (from a ), the quote "Light is therefore colour" from an 1818 lecture by Turner, and a view of "The Fighting Temeraire".


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: In March 2018, the Treasury began a consultation looking at the potential withdrawal of the £50 note, as well as the one and two pence coins, on the basis that they are used significantly less than other denominations, with an additional rationale over the £50 note being the perception in the UK of its use in money laundering, tax evasion and other financial crime, despite the demand for it overseas. The Series F version was introduced in 2011, while its predecessor was in circulation for twenty years, so there was some consideration to withdrawing the £50 note entirely as a way of combatting tax evasion, and the fact that cash transactions using such a high value note are becoming increasingly rare. However, in October 2018 the Bank of England announced plans to introduce a Series G polymer £50 note, following the review by the government. The new £50 note is planned for introduction once the Series G £20 note featuring J. M. W. Turner is released. In July 2019, it was announced that the new note would feature computer pioneer Alan Turing, from a photograph taken by the Elliott & Fry photographic studio in 1951, a table of formulae from Turing's 1936 work "On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem", an image of the Automatic Computing Engine Pilot machine, technical drawings of the British bombe machine, the quote "This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be" from an interview Turing gave to "The Times" on 11 June 1949, and a ticker tape showing Turing's date of birth in binary code.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Not since 1945 have notes with a higher value than £50 been issued for general circulation by the Bank of England, although banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland still use £100 notes. However, the Bank of England does produce higher-value notes that are used to maintain parity with Scottish and Northern Irish notes. Banknotes issued by Scottish and Northern Irish banks have to be backed pound for pound by Bank of England notes (other than a small amount representing the currency in circulation in 1845), and special £1 million and £100 million notes are used for this purpose. Their design is based on the old Series A notes.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: While provincial banks in England and Wales lost the right to issue paper currency altogether, the practice of private banknote issue has continued in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The right of Scottish banks to issue notes is popularly attributed to the author Sir Walter Scott, who, in 1826, waged a campaign to retain Scottish banknotes under the pseudonym "Malachi Malagrowther". Scott feared that the limitation on private banknotes proposed with the Bankers (Scotland) Act 1826 would have adverse economic consequences if enacted in Scotland because gold and silver were scarce and Scottish commerce relied on small notes as the principal medium of circulating money. His action eventually halted the abolition of private banknotes in Scotland.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Scottish and Northern Irish banknotes are unusual, firstly because they are issued by retail banks, not central banks, and secondly, as they are technically not legal tender anywhere in the UK – not even in Scotland or Northern Ireland – as they are in fact promissory notes.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Seven retail banks have the authority of HM Treasury to issue sterling banknotes as currency. Despite this, the notes can be refused at the discretion of recipients in England and Wales, and are often not accepted by banks and exchange bureaus outside of the United Kingdom. This is particularly true in the case of the Royal Bank of Scotland 's £1 note, which is the only £1 note to remain in circulation within the UK.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: In 2000, the European Central Bank indicated that, should the United Kingdom join the Euro, Scottish banks (and, by extension, Northern Irish banks) would have to cease banknote issue. During the Financial crisis of 2007–2008, the future of private banknotes in the United Kingdom was uncertain.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: After the financial crisis of 2007–08, a number of banks were rescued from collapse by the United Kingdom government. The Banking Act 2009 was passed to improve protection for holders of banknotes issued by the authorised banks, so that the notes would have the same level of guaranteed value to that of Bank of England notes. Critics of the 2009 Act expressed concerns that it would restrict the issue of banknotes by commercial banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland by removing many of the provisions of the earlier Acts quoted above. Under the original proposals, banks would have been forced to lodge sterling funds with the Bank of England to cover private note issue for a full week, rather than over a weekend, thereby losing four days' interest and making banknote production financially unviable. Following negotiations among the UK Treasury, the Bank of England and the Scottish banks, it was agreed that the funds would earn interest, allowing them to continue to issue their own notes.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: During the public debate leading up to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the question of Scotland's future currency was discussed. Whilst the SNP advocated a currency union between an independent Scotland and the remaining United Kingdom, HM Treasury issued a statement in April 2013 stating that the present relationship with the Bank of England could be changed after independence, with the result that Scottish banks might lose the ability to issue banknotes backed by Bank of England funds.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Until 1701 Scotland issued its own pound, the Pound Scots. The issuing of retail-bank banknotes in Scotland is subject to the Bank Charter Act 1844, Banknotes (Scotland) Act 1845, the Currency and Bank Notes Act 1928, and the Coinage Act 1971. Pursuant to some of these statutes, the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs publishes an account of "the Amount of Notes authorised by Law to be issued by the several Banks of Issue in Scotland, and the Average Amount of Notes in Circulation, and of Bank of England Notes and Coin held" in the "London Gazette". See for example "Gazette" Issue 58254 published 21 February 2007 at page 2544.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: All Bank of Scotland notes bear a portrait of Sir Walter Scott on the front in commemoration of his 1826 "Malachi Malagrowther" campaign for Scottish banks to retain the right to issue their own notes. Bank of Scotland's 2007 redesign of their banknotes are known as the "Bridges of Scotland" series. These notes were introduced on 17 September 2007, and show Scotland's most famous bridges on the reverse side. The "Bridges of Scotland" series is currently being refreshed with the issue of new polymer notes with designs that follow the same basic theme of "bridges". The previous "Tercentenary" series notes are being withdrawn from circulation and replaced with the 2007 series (or polymer series as these are issued), but remain legal currency.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Following the announcement that HBOS (Bank of Scotland's parent company) would be taken over by Lloyds TSB in September 2008, it was confirmed that the new banking company would continue to print bank notes under the Bank of Scotland name. According to the Bank Notes (Scotland) Act 1845, the bank could have lost its note-issuing rights, but by retaining headquarters within Scotland, banknote issue will continue.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: As of August 2017, the Royal Bank of Scotland is in the process of adopting a new series of banknotes. These will be made of polymer. Two (the £5 and £10 notes) have already been released, whilst a new £20 note is being designed. The £5 note shows Nan Shepherd on the obverse accompanied by a quote from her 1977 book "The Living Mountain", and the Cairngorms in the background. The reverse displays two mackerel, with an excerpt from the poem (The Choice) by Scottish Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean. The obverse of the £10 note shows Mary Somerville, with a quote from her work 'The Connection of the Physical Sciences', and Burntisland beach in the background. The reverse displays two otters and an excerpt from the poem 'Moorings' by Norman MacCaig. The obverse of the £20 note, to be introduced in 2020, will show Catherine Cranston.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The previous series of Royal Bank of Scotland notes, originally issued in 1987, remains in circulation, although it is now in the process of being replaced by polymer notes. On the front of each note is a picture of Lord Ilay (1682–1761), the first governor of the bank, based on a portrait painted in 1744 by the Edinburgh artist Allan Ramsay. The front of the notes also feature an engraving of the bank's former headquarters in St. Andrew Square, Edinburgh. The background graphic on both sides of the notes is a radial star design which is based on the ornate ceiling of the banking hall in the old headquarters building. On the back of the notes are images of Scottish castles, with a different castle for each denomination.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Occasionally the Royal Bank of Scotland issues commemorative banknotes. Examples include the £1 note issued to mark the 150th Anniversary of the birth of Alexander Graham Bell in 1997, the £20 note for the 100th birthday of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in 2000, the £5 note honouring veteran golfer Jack Nicklaus in his last competitive Open Championship at St Andrews in 2005, and the £10 note issued in commemoration of HM Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee in 2012. These notes are much sought-after by collectors and they rarely remain long in circulation.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Clydesdale Bank has three series of banknotes in circulation at present. The most recent set of notes, the "Polymer" Series started coming into circulation in March 2015, when the Clydesdale Bank became the first bank in Great Britain to issue polymer banknotes. The £5 commemorative notes, issued to mark the 125th anniversary of the construction of the Forth Bridge, contain several new security features including a reflective graphic printed over a transparent "window" in the banknote. Further notes in the polymer series will be introduced over time, replacing the previous paper notes.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The polymer notes continue the theme of the "World Heritage" Series of paper banknotes, introduced in autumn 2009. The new notes each depict a different notable Scot on the front and on the reverse bear an illustration of one of Scotland's UNESCO World Heritage Sites.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Banknotes of the earlier "Famous Scots" Series portray notable Scottish historical people along with items and locations associated with them.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The Clydesdale Bank also occasionally issues special edition banknotes, such as a £10 note celebrating the bank's sponsorship of the Scotland team at the 2006 Commonwealth Games


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: In Northern Ireland, three retail banks exercise their right to issue pound sterling notes: Bank of Ireland, Danske Bank (formerly Northern Bank) and Ulster Bank. , Northern Bank and Ulster Bank are the only two banks that have issued special commemorative notes so far.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Until June 2020, First Trust Bank (formerly Allied Irish Banks) issued their own banknotes but no longer do so.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Like other banks in Northern Ireland, Bank of Ireland retains its note-issuing rights from before the partition of Ireland; while Bank of Ireland is headquartered in Dublin, it issues sterling notes within the United Kingdom. In spite of its name, Bank of Ireland is not, and never has been, a central bank; it is a retail bank. Its sterling notes should not be confused with banknotes of the former Irish pound which were in use in the Republic of Ireland before the adoption of the euro in 2001.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Banknotes issued by Bank of Ireland are of a uniform design, with denominations of £5, £10 £20, £50 and £100 each differentiated by colour. The notes all feature an illustration of a seated woman, Hibernia, and the heraldic shields of the Counties of Northern Ireland. Until April 2008, all Bank of Ireland notes featured an illustration of Queen's University of Belfast on the reverse side. A new series of £5, £10 and £20 notes issued in April 2008 depicts the Old Bushmills Distillery and these new notes will gradually replace the previous series as older notes are withdrawn from circulation. In 2019 the Bank of Ireland released new Polymer banknotes with the same design as their paper counterparts but the same size as the Bank of England equivalents.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Until June 2020, First Trust Bank issued notes in denominations of £10, £20, £50 and £100. The notes bear portraits of generic Northern Irish people on the front with varied illustrations on the reverse. Until 1993 the bank issued notes under its former trading name, Allied Irish Banks.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: In February 2019, First Trust announced it would stop issuing its own banknotes, with the final withdrawal on 30 June 2020. Any notes still in circulation remained legal currency until 30 June 2022, after which they could be exchanged for other sterling notes at branches of the bank.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: In 2012 Northern Bank adopted the name of its Copenhagen-based parent company Danske Bank Group and rebranded its retail banking operation. In June 2013 the bank issued a new series of £10 and £20 notes bearing the new brand name; at the same time it also announced that it would cease production of £50 and £100 notes. Older notes bearing the Northern Bank name will continue in circulation for some time as they are gradually withdrawn, and remain acceptable forms of payment. In spite of the Danish name on the new notes, banknotes issued by Danske Bank are sterling notes and should not be confused with banknotes of the Danish krone issued by the Danmarks Nationalbank, Denmark's central bank.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Danske Bank does not issue £5 notes, but a special commemorative £5 note was issued by the Northern Bank to mark the Year 2000; it was a polymer banknote, printed on synthetic polymer instead of paper. It is the only one of the bank's pre-2004 notes still in circulation; all others were recalled following the £26.5 million pound robbery at its Belfast headquarters in 2004.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Ulster Bank notes all feature a vignette of three Northern Ireland views: the Mourne Mountains, the Queen Elizabeth Bridge and the Giant's Causeway. Notes issued from 1 January 2007 feature the Royal Bank of Scotland "daisy wheel" logo.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: In November 2006 Ulster Bank issued its first commemorative banknote – an issue of one million £5 notes commemorating the first anniversary of the death of Northern Irish footballer George Best.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: In June 2018, Ulster Bank announced the introduction of a new series of polymer banknote designs, the first in the United Kingdom to have a vertical orientation. The new series was designed around the theme "Living in Nature", highlighting Northern Ireland's botanical, zoological and geographical features. The first announced were the five-pound note, featuring images of Strangford Lough, the Brent goose and the fuchsia, was designed using the theme of "migration", while the ten-pound note, which carries the theme of "growth", features Lough Erne, the Irish hare and the Guelder-rose. In August 2019, the design of the new twenty-pound note was revealed, with the idea of Northern Ireland as 'dwelling place', and images including Lough Neagh, the European eel and the Hawthorn flower.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: As part of the transfer of the business of Ulster Bank Limited to National Westminster Bank PLC that was completed on 3 May 2021, in 2020 the right to issue banknotes was transferred from Ulster Bank Limited to National Westminster Bank PLC.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The Channel Islands are grouped for administrative purposes into the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey. The islands are not part of the United Kingdom but are dependencies of the British Crown and in currency union with the UK. Both Jersey and Guernsey issue their own banknotes. These notes circulate freely between the two territories, so Jersey notes are commonly used in Guernsey, and vice versa. Private banknotes are no longer in circulation in the Channel Islands. These notes are legal tender in their jurisdictions but are not legal tender in the UK.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The Government of Alderney (a part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey) is also licensed to issue its own currency, the Alderney pound, but only mints special commemorative sterling coins and does not issue banknotes.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The current series of notes entered circulation on 29 April 2010. The obverse of the notes includes a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II based on a photograph by Mark Lawrence, alongside a view of an important Jersey landmark, with text in English. The reverse of each note includes an image of one of Jersey's numerous historic coastal defence towers, built in the late 18th century, as well as a further image of cultural or landscape importance, images of the twelve parish crests, and with denomination worded in French and Jèrriais. The watermark is a Jersey cow, and further security features include a see-through map of Jersey, and on the £10, £20 and £50 a patch hologram showing a varying image of the coat of arms of Jersey and the Island of Jersey on a background pattern of La Corbière lighthouse. On 1 June 2012, a £100 note was issued to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The previous series, gradually being withdrawn from circulation in 2010, depicted Queen Elizabeth II on the front and various landmarks of Jersey or incidents in Jersey history on the reverse.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The Guernsey pound is legal tender in Guernsey, but also circulates freely in Jersey. It is a sterling pound but the word "sterling" is omitted on banknotes, as on the English ones. Guernsey banknotes can also be exchanged in banks and in bureaux de change, although it has been reported that British banks no longer accept £1 Guernsey banknotes because they no longer have the facility for handling £1 UK banknotes (which are only issued in Scotland).


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The Isle of Man Government issues its own banknotes and coinage, which are legal tender in the Isle of Man. Manx pounds are a local issue of sterling, but the word "sterling" does not appear on the banknotes. These notes can be exchanged in banks and in bureaux de change in the United Kingdom.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The front of all Manx banknotes features images of Queen Elizabeth II (not wearing a crown: she was only Lord of Mann on the island) and the Triskeles (three legs emblem). Each denomination features a different scene of the island on its reverse side:


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: Three British overseas territories use their own separate currencies denominated in pounds which are at par with the pound sterling. The governments of these territories print their own banknotes which in general may only be used within their territory of origin. Bank of England notes usually circulate alongside the local note issues and are accepted as legal currency.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: In Gibraltar, banknotes are issued by the Government of Gibraltar. The pound was made sole legal tender in 1898 and Gibraltar has issued its own banknotes since 1934. The notes bear an image of the British monarch on the obverse and the wording "pounds sterling", meaning that more retailers in the UK will accept them.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: The Falkland Islands pound is the currency of the Falkland Islands. Banknotes are issued by the Falkland Islands Government. The illustrations on all notes are the same, featuring the British monarch, wildlife and local scenes; denominations are distinguished by the size and colour of the notes.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha's constituent territories of Saint Helena and Ascension Island use the Saint Helena pound. Banknotes in these areas are issued by the Saint Helena Government and bear the image of the British monarch.


title: Banknotes of the pound sterling

text: According to the central banks, the ratio of counterfeited bank notes is about 10 in one million for the Swiss franc, 50 in one million for the euro, 100 in one million for United States dollar and 300 in one million for sterling.


title: Gallagher (comedian)

text: Leo Anthony Gallagher Jr. (July 24, 1946 – November 11, 2022), known mononymously as Gallagher, was an American comedian who became one of the most recognizable comedic performers of the 1980s for his prop and observational routine that included the signature act of smashing a watermelon on stage with a wooden sledgehammer. For more than 30 years, he played between 100 and 200 shows a year, destroying tens of thousands of melons with the sledgehammer he called the "Sledge-O-Matic".


title: Gallagher (comedian)

text: Gallagher was born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on July 24, 1946, to a family of Irish and Croatian heritage. Until the age of nine, he lived in Lorain, Ohio, but because of his asthma, the family moved to South Tampa, Florida, where he attended Henry B. Plant High School. He went on to graduate from the University of South Florida with a chemical engineering degree in 1970. He minored in English literature.


title: Gallagher (comedian)

text: After college, Gallagher began working as comic/musician Jim Stafford's road manager. Stafford and Gallagher traveled to California in 1969, during which time Gallagher decided to perform as well. He began honing his own comedy act while frequenting both The Comedy Store and The Ice House. He performed twice on "The Tonight Show" when Johnny Carson was hosting, though Carson disliked prop comedy. He first appeared on the show on December 5, 1975, when he demonstrated his prop, "The Tonight Show Home Game", and again on May 9, 1979. He also performed several times on the show when guest hosts were filling in for Carson. Additionally, Gallagher made an appearance on "The Mike Douglas Show", one on "The Merv Griffin Show", and several at Playboy Clubs.


title: Gallagher (comedian)

text: Gallagher's first comedy special, "An Uncensored Evening", was the first comedy stand-up special ever to air on cable television. In contrast to other popular stand-up comics of the era who transitioned to sitcom and movie roles, Gallagher remained for the most part a touring comedian, and he once noted that he performed "200 shows a year for 35 years." Per "Variety" magazine, he did over 3,500 live shows over the course of his career.


title: Gallagher (comedian)

text: Running for governor (as an independent) in the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election, Gallagher finished 16th out of 135 candidates with 5,466 votes.