Review

Culture

Economics

Trust

21 November 2025

5 min read

Money’s hidden meanings in a contactless age

The Bank of England Museum reveals the symbolism, morality and power woven into the history of money

Susan Gray

Susan is a writer specialising in visual arts and contributes to Art Quarterly, The Tablet, Church Times and Discover Britain.

The Bank of England vaults.

Bank of England.

Our era of contactless payments obscures the symbolism once lavished on money. But the rich history of meaning, morality and power, layered into everyday transactions, is uncovered at an exhibition at the Bank of England Museum

Building the Bank celebrates 100 years of the current Bank of England building, on the site of Sir John Soane’s original structure, completed in 1827. Surveying a century makes past practices seem quaint: until 1973 the institution was guarded by the Bank Piquet military guard. A 1961 photo shows 12 Guardsmen with bearskin hats and bayonets, together with a drummer or piper, a sergeant and an officer, marching into the Threadneedle Streer entrance. Even now, when the wealth of most people in developed countries is contained in data warehouses, 400,000 gold bars are held in vaults deep beneath the Bank.

Faiths have grappled with money’s impact for millennia. Christianity’s relationship with money is tinged with unease, as St Paul’s oft misquoted letter to Timothy illustrates: “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” Personally, the immobilising feeling of envy, particularly if it is towards friends, does feel exactly like being pierced with blinding toxicity.

Contrastingly, in Hinduism pursuing wealth is one of four pillars of faith, called Artha. In Hinduism attempting to attain material wealth is part of attempting to attain salvation.

Herbert Baker, architect of the Bank of England, embodies moral ambiguity around faith and money. Buried in Westminster Abbey, and architect of Church House next door, Baker established his reputation working for Cecil Rhodes, prime minister of the Cape Colony 1890- 96. Vicar’s son Rhodes is now seen as paving the way for apartheid in southern Africa, and imposing an economically exploitive, racist, and imperialist system on the region. Baker also worked with better- known Edwin Lutyens on government buildings in New Delhi from 1912, declaring of the British Raj’s new seat of power “it must not be Indian, nor English, nor Roman, but it must be Imperial”.

After World War One, Soane’s bank was too small to house the increased staff numbers needed to service the ballooning national debt and financial complexity of the Roaring Twenties. Bordered by major roads at the heart of the City of London, the institution’s footprint could not expand, so Herbert created a design incorporating some of Soane’s classical aspects, but with floors at a greater depth and height than its processor.

From grand gestures to tiny details, classical mythology is a key element of the Bank’s design. Sculptor Charles Wheeler modelled doorknobs showing the face of Mercury. Mercury is the patron deity of finance and communication. Tiles for an officials’ lunchroom show a caduceus, with two bright blue snakes, tails entwined, framing Mercury’s face. Caducei are the symbol of commerce, representing reciprocity and mutually beneficial transactions.

Forty caryatids, the classical female form used in place of a pillar in Greek architecture, were salvaged from Soane’s building and reused. Some caryatids are in the area where old banknotes can be exchanged, besides the museum, now the only part of the Bank open to the public.

Outside, on the dome at the northwest corner of the bank, a gilt bronze statue of Ariel, named after the spirit of the air in The Tempest, represents “the dynamic spirit of the Bank which carries Credit and Trust over the wide world.”

The image of banks as depositories of trust and positive relationships took a pasting worldwide during the 2008 Credit Crisis and lean years that followed. But in 2015 former Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, argues that banking services are a key part of functioning communities, and banks should be able to put people before profit. “At the heart of both these expectations is the value of the person as sacred, and all other things as secondary to human dignity. It is a value rooted in many faiths and especially in our Judaeo-Christian tradition. Of course profits have to be made, but they need to be measured not only in terms of their absolute return on capital employed, but also in terms of the human cost of achieving that return.

“Large institutions with adequate balance sheets working to maximise returns from those who can most afford it do not produce a sustainable society in the long term. Such an approach is narrow-minded and short-termist, because sustainable societies are essential to the large companies within them. It is also an immoral approach.”

Mosaics created by Boris Anrep idealise the Bank’ of England’s sunnier intentions towards the wider community. Anrep also designed mosaics for Westminster Cathedral, Tate Britain and the National Gallery. For the Bank, a tiny coin from the reign of Henry VIII known as the George Noble, the first time St George and the dragon appeared on English coinage, was magnified into a roundel showing the galloping saint, visor up, lancing the prostate dragon at the base. The George Noble was one of 50 designs, based on advances in coinage, gracing the Bank’s corridors.

At the main entrance, a mosaic showing a pillar, representing the Bank, is guarded by two lions, referencing the sculpture from Mycenae. The Bank’s global role, and place at the centre of the then British Empire is shown by the constellations of the Plough and Southern Cross, representing the southern and northern hemispheres.

An image of the Empire Clock Baker made for the Bank, - now disassembled - shows an ornate dial, marked in 24 sections, with the sun representing India and an anchor symbolising the port cities of Singapore and Hong Kong.

In 1946 the Bank of England was nationalised, formalising its role as a public institution, operating in a post war decolonialising world, totally different to the one its building had been designed for just 20 years before.

Systems and symbols around money mutate with the times. Money’s intangibility in our time of app and tap payment, makes its power less distinct than in the days of gold sovereigns. But we fool ourselves if we say money is unimportant, because all of history says otherwise.

Building the Bank, Bank of England Museum, until 2026

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Review

Culture

Film & TV

Trauma

5 June 2025

5 min read

This bad TV version of The Last of Us ruins much more than storytelling

Following up the acclaimed video game doesn't deliver prestige viewing.

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

A pensive looking woman glances to the side.

Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey.

HBO.

What’s the point of the TV adaptation of The Last of Us?

Throughout its second series, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this question. I’m still short of an answer.

Turning the two The Last of Us video games into prestige TV was always going to be problematic, because those video games already were prestige TV. You just had to press buttons on a controller now and then.

The first The Last of Us video game is regularly included in lists of the best video games ever, and it’s not because of any ground-breaking gameplay or because of any technological advancements it made. It’s because of its story.

It is richly character-focussed, gritty, realistic, and utterly human. The Last of Us Part I (as it’s now known) carries the kind of gravitas and emotional complexity you might expect from the likes of The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Chernobyl, or The West Wing. It’s already prestige TV.

So, is the TV adaptation simply an attempt to make this same story accessible to people who don’t play video games? Maybe. That would make sense, were it not for its deeply frustrating second series, the finale of which has just aired.

The Last of Us Part II was massively controversial when it released in 2020. (WARNING: absolutely colossal spoilers ahead, for both the games and the TV show). Joel – the main protagonist of the first game – is abruptly and brutally murdered in its opening act. This leads Ellie – his pseudo-surrogate-daughter – to hunt down those responsible in attempt to enact a reckoning.

In the video game, most of the story is told over the course of three days. First, from Ellie’s perspective, then from the perspective of Abby, Joel’s killer. In the TV show, the second series covers Ellie’s side of the story before very abruptly shifting to Abby’s side in the final seconds, leaving the viewers with a cliffhanger. Even as someone who’s played the game and knows what’s going to happen, it felt like a bit of a slap in the face.

But for someone who hasn’t played the games it must be bordering on nonsensical. Even spread over two series, the story is so truncated, and so much is left unsaid. I can’t imagine making sense of this series without having played the video game first. But the TV show is basically just a live action remake of the game. Which again begs the question: what’s the point of the TV adaptation of The Last of Us?

I’ve found this series, and the video game it’s based off, hugely frustrating. Because it’s trying to convey an important message. But both the game and the show contrive to undermine their important central ideas through poor storytelling techniques and structures.

But in making clear what was left unsaid in the game, the power of the moment is undercut. Much is spoken; little is said.

Let’s take one example. Half-way through the game (or towards the end of series 2), Ellie has tracked down and tortured one of Abby’s friends for information on her whereabouts. Afterwards, she talks to her lover Dina about what happened.

In the game, it’s harrowing. Ellie is visibly shaken by what she’s just witnessed herself do. “I made her talk.” She says. And then to Dina: “I don’t want to lose you.” “Good,” comes Dina’s reply. And that’s it. Cut to black. Little is spoken; much is said.

But where the scenes last about 30 seconds in the game, in the TV show it’s over five minutes long. “I made her talk. I thought it would be harder to do, but it wasn’t. It was easy. I just kept hurting her.” So says Ellie, halfway through the conversation. The writers are clearly trying to make explicit Ellie’s fear that she’s losing herself, and Dina by extension, in her thirst for revenge. But in making clear what was left unsaid in the game, the power of the moment is undercut. Much is spoken; little is said.

“I know writers who use subtext and they’re all cowards,” Garth Marenghi once said. I can only assume he writes for HBO now.

It’s a shame the scene gets fluffed as badly as it does, because really it’s the centrepiece of the narrative. Faced with unthinkable violence, Ellie chooses to repay the act in kind. But, in hunting down and torturing those responsible, ultimately Ellie finds herself becoming less and less human with each act of revenge. Here, in this conversation with Dina, Ellie begins to glimpse the reality of this. That acts of violence towards others are ultimately also acts of violence towards her own nature.

This is, as it turns out, a deeply Christian notion. Where other Ancient Near Eastern creation myths depict their gods as creating the world through violent and bloody struggle, in Genesis God merely speaks life into being. Where Jesus’ disciples would violently overthrow their Roman oppressors, he instead says “those who live by the sword, die by the sword.”

Moreover, Jesus’ death by crucifixion was unspeakably cruel and violent, encompassing protracted public humiliation, sexual abuse, and mutilation. It is here that Christ draws the suffering of the world to himself, that we might be given the opportunity to live free from the ongoing cycle of violence that surrounds us. Not that we might avoid having violence done to us, but that we might find the strength not to be violent in turn.

And this is the ultimate paradox at the centre of Christianity: that the greatest show of strength the world has ever seen is found in Christ’s being nailed to a tree.

Violence begets violence begets violence begets violence. That’s the message of The Last of Us Part II; albeit one conveyed in a rather ham-fisted way. While I’m not optimistic, I hope the next series of the TV show manages to fix the game’s wobbly narrative structure to convey this in a way that is nuanced and compelling. Because it’s a message we desperately need to hear.

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