Beatrix Potter’s much-loved creation Peter Rabbit is to become the first ever children’s literary character to feature on a British coin, the Royal Mint has announced.

The fluffy vegetable thief will appear on a series of 50p coins, a very limited commemorative run of which is rendered in colour and available from today (February 29th). It shows Peter wearing the blue jacket he’s forced to leave behind when he gets caught in Mr McGregor’s garden.

The decision to mint the coins has been made to mark the 150th anniversary of Potter’s birth in 1866. Her writing became an instant success in 1902 when ‘The Tales of Peter Rabbit’, her first book which featured Peter and his better-behaved siblings Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail, was picked up by Frederick Warne & Co.

A conservationist who maintained almost all of the land now demarcating the Lake District National Park, Potter wrote and illustrated 23 more books whose characters, including Jemima Puddle-Duck, Squirrel Nutkin and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, became hugely beloved by children around the world until her death in 1943 at the age of 77.

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Uncoloured regular coins featured the same design will be released into general circulation later in 2016, with plans also announced to mint coins featuring three more of Potter’s characters before the end of the year.

The designs were created by one of the Royal Mint’s coin designers, Emma Noble, who said that it was “amazing to be given the opportunity to work with such famous and treasured literary characters.”

“I wanted to put Beatrix Potter's illustrations to the forefront of my design as they are lovely images and the characters are very well known,” Noble said.

“I felt they were strong enough to stand alone and I designed them in this way as I thought they would work best for both the coloured commemorative and uncoloured circulating coins. I really hope people are pleased with them as a set.”

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