The new £50 note could become the UK’s first to feature someone from an ethnic minority, as the Bank of England begins its call for submissions from the public.

Historians and politicians are among those who have called for the first British Muslim Second World War heroine, Noor Inayat Khan, to be the “face” of the highest-denomination note, which will be reissued in plastic from 2020

The campaign, started by activist Zehra Zaidi and backed by historian and BBC presenter Dan Snow, as well as Tom Tugendhat MP and Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, had already gathered hundreds of supporters in its first day.

Ms Zaidi said: “Noor Inayat Khan was an inspirational and complex woman who was a Brit, a soldier, a writer, a Muslim, an Indian independence supporter, a Sufi, a fighter against fascism and a heroine to all. She navigated complex identities and has so much resonance in the world we live in today.”

A Muslim Sufi pacifist, who began her career as a children’s writer living in Paris with her family, Ms Inayat Khan was perhaps an unlikely candidate to spy for Britain against the Nazis.

However, after escaping to Britain following the fall of France, she trained for the Women’s Auxiliary Airforce and was later recruited as a secret agent for the Special Operations Executive (SOE). She became the first female radio operator sent into Nazi-occupied France in 1943 - aged just 29.