George Orwell £2 (2025)

The George Orwell £2 was not intended for general circulation. It was sold as a brilliant uncirculated coin, either in a Royal Mint pack that explores Orwell's life and books or loose in a protective capsule. A sealed pack sells ahead of a loose coin. The flat surface of the lens and the smooth areas of the eye show fingerprints and scuffs clearly, so check a loose coin under a light before buying, and look for knocks on the rays around the outer ring.

The George Orwell £2 was not issued for circulation, so it has no rarity rank.

The George Orwell £2 is dominated by a single eye. Look closely and the pupil is a camera lens, with BIG BROTHER curving above it and IS WATCHING YOU below. Rays fan out across the yellow outer ring, and GEORGE ORWELL sits at the bottom. The edge reads THERE WAS TRUTH AND THERE WAS UNTRUTH, and King Charles III is on the obverse. There is no portrait of Orwell himself anywhere on the coin.

George Orwell was a novelist, poet, journalist and social critic, remembered above all for Animal Farm, published in 1945, and Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949. Much of his non-fiction grew out of what he lived through: a tour of the industrial north of England, years spent in poverty, and service as a volunteer on the Republican side against Franco's Nationalists in Spain. That last experience hardened the opposition to totalitarianism that runs through his work. For the 75th anniversary of his death, The Royal Mint produced this 2025 coin with the support of the Orwell Foundation, a charity sanctioned by the Orwell Estate. Henry Gray, whose earlier £2 designs include the Alexander Graham Bell and Edward Jenner coins, took Big Brother from Nineteen Eighty-Four as his subject. At first glance the centre is a large eye, but its pupil is a camera lens, a nod to the theme of totalitarianism in his writing. The slogan BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU wraps around the lens, rays spread across the outer ring, and GEORGE ORWELL runs along the bottom. The edge quotes the same novel: THERE WAS TRUTH AND THERE WAS UNTRUTH.