The world of writing
WELLS RESEARCHED
It presumably takes a lot of time, discussion and planning before the Royal Mint launches a new coin. So it’s a bit of a mystery how in January the Mint managed to issue a new £2 coin commemorating the 75th anniversary of death of author HG Wells depicting one of the ‘monstrous tripod’ Martian war machines from his most famous novel, The War of the Worlds, as having four legs. Compounding the impression of carelessness, the coin shows the protagonist of Wells’s The Invisible Man wearing a top hat. In the novel he is described as wearing ‘a widebrimmed hat’.
Adam Roberts, award-winning science fiction novelist and professor of 19th century literature at Royal Holloway, University of
