Scottish author Nan Shepherd, who extensively detailed the Cairngorm Mountains in her classic 80-page text The Living Mountain, is slated to be featured on a new Scottish banknote.
The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) chose Shepherd for its forthcoming £5 note after scientist Mary Somerville was chosen by public vote for commemoration on the £10 note. The £5 note will enter circulation later this year, and the £10 will follow in 2017.
Alongside a portrait of Shepherd, the £5 note features a quote from the author’s first novel, The Quarry Wood: “It’s a grand thing to get leave to live;” and another from The Living Mountain: “But the struggle between frost and the force in running water is not quickly over. The battle fluctuates, and at the point of fluctuation between the motion in water and the immobility of frost, strange and beautiful forms are evolved.”
'It's a grand thing to get leave to live' Nan Shepherd to appear in all her glory on the Scottish £5 note https://t.co/YYnsCmHjqv
— Jessica Woollard (@WoollardJessica) April 25, 2016
Shepherd, who was born in 1893, wrote The Living Mountain during the Second World War but didn’t publish it until 1977, four years before she died.