Author Nan Shepherd chosen as first woman to feature on Scottish bank note

Writer Robert Macfarlane hails the Quarry Wood novelist, who will adorn £5 notes entering circulation later this year, as ‘a brilliant, progressive choice’

The Scottish author Nan Shepherd, who explored the Cairngorms in her classic text The Living Mountain, is to feature on the new Scottish £5 note.

Shepherd was chosen by the Royal Bank of Scotland board after the scientist Mary Somerville was selected as the image for the Scottish £10 note by public vote. The new £5 note will enter circulation later this year, with the £10 to follow in 2017. RBS board chair Malcolm Buchanan said the bank had “never before featured a woman on its main issue bank notes” and that the new issues celebrated “the fantastic, and often overlooked, achievements of two great Scottish women”.

Related: How Nan Shepherd remade my vision of the Cairngorms

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