Cecil Doughty

Artist: Cecil Doughty
Medium: Gouache on Board
Size: 17" x 12" (420mm x 315mm)
Date: 1970s

This is the original Gouache painting by Cecil Doughty.

Operation Bernhard was the name of a secret German plan devised during the Second World War to destabilise the British economy by flooding the country with forged Bank of England £5, £10, £20, and £50 notes.

The plan was directed by, and named after, SS Major Bernhard Krüger, who set up a team of one hundred and forty-two counterfeiters from among inmates at Sachsenhausen. It is believed that most of the notes produced ended up at the bottom of Lake Toplitz, near Ebensee, from where they were recovered by divers in 1959, but examples continued to turn up in circulation in Britain for many years, which caused the Bank of England to withdraw all notes larger than £5 from circulation, and not reintroduce the denominations until the early 1960s (£10), 1970 (£20), or 1980 (£50).