Author Description

2021 marks fifty years since decimalisation in Britain, the biggest single change to our currency in over 1,000 years. The introduction of a decimal system of currency was a huge undertaking: almost a decade in the planning, it affected just about every facet of everyday life. In the lead-up to changeover in 1971 it was difficult to look in a newspaper or watch TV without seeing an ad, or a news piece, about the change to decimal currency. And yet, when the change came, no amount of preparation was enough - people were still unprepared.Everyone in Britain at that time had spent their whole lives calculating with twelve pennies to the shilling and twenty shillings to the pound and now, with one action, this was swept aside.It was a revolutionary change in British currency, and in this book BAFTA-award documentary maker and author Stewart Binns explores the impetus, the planning, and the execution of the single biggest change Britain has ever made to its money.