At the start of Edward VII's reign women, along with the poor and criminals, were denied the right to vote. Mutilating coins was one of the methods suffragettes used to spread their message of universal suffrage to a wide audience. Pennies were used by all sections of society and were so small a denomination they were rarely recalled by the Bank.
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Cavafy was one of the earliest modern authors to write about same-sex love and proved an inspiration to the young Hockney, who stole a copy of Cavafy's translated poems from Bradford Library in 1960. The etching is not a literal interpretation of the poem's subject matter - homo-erotic fantasies in a sleepy, provincial village - but instead evokes the poem's mood of relaxed intimacy through the use of a crisp and spare line.
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