Who Will Be the Face of the £50 Bill? Probably Not a Soccer Player Riding a Unicorn

The 50-pound bill, worth about $65, is rarely used in everyday life in Britain, but that hasn’t stopped Britons from trying to get their favorites to be the face of a forthcoming design of the note. 

As soon as the Bank of England announced plans last weekend to redesign the bill, petitions popped up extolling the virtues of a range of worthies. 

The most popular prospects offer a skewed view of the kind of figures who set British hearts aflutter. There is Noor Inayat Khan, a Muslim woman who spied for Britain during World War II; Margaret Thatcher, the country’s first female prime minister, who remains a sharply divisive figure decades after her tenure; and an English soccer player riding an inflatable unicorn.