MI5 spy Willie Carlin was an undercover British agent in Derry, Northern Ireland during ‘The Troubles’ when his handlers brought him to London for a bit of R&R and a slap-up meal with the man who’d recruited him, Alan Rees-Morgan. There was also a woman at their dinner named ‘Paula’ who seemed to be a secretary. 

“It was odd because Alan was more kind of ‘How's the family?’ and all this kind of stuff, whereas this woman, Paula, wanted to know about Martin McGuinness and about guns,” Carlin told SPYSCAPE’s True Spies podcast. “‘And how many gunmen do you think live in your area? And what are their names?’ And I remember thinking, ‘You're no bloody secretary.’”

Years later, he recognized a photo of ‘Paula’ in the newspaper. Her name was Stella Rimington and in 1992 she was to become the first female Director-General of Britain’s MI5 intelligence service - a position she would occupy for four years.

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Rimington was reportedly the inspiration for the first female ‘M’ character in the James Bond movies, famously played by Dame Judi Dench. A formidable woman in a male-dominated underworld, Rimington worked for 27 years in MI5 and helped open doors for females in intelligence. None of it was easy. 

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The spying life

She has spoken about the demands of her career on her family and watching her children being raised by a nanny. Rimington once recalled being a young mother of two when her baby was rushed into hospital with convulsions. At the time, she was en route to a safe house to meet an Eastern Europe spy who was thinking of defecting. If Rimington didn’t show up, the asset wouldn’t get into the house. She went to the him first.

Keeping her MI5 role a secret also presented challenges.

“You can’t be undercover if people know who you work for,” she said. “You work out some cover story and you try to make yourself extremely boring. I once said I bought boots for the Army. On another occasion, I said I did PR for a cosmetics company. Unfortunately, on that occasion, I met someone who actually did do that. That was a bit of a problem.”

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A claustrophobic childhood

Rimington was born in London in 1935, a few years before WWII. She described her childhood as ‘disturbed and frightening’. She left London with her family at age four, first to Essex and then to Barrow-in-Furness, a port town in Cumbria, northwest England, during the Barrow Blitz.

The town’s shipyard made it a key target for Hitler’s German Luftwaffe, and Rimington recalled hiding under the stairs as bombs rained down. The experience left her claustrophobic into adulthood.

She completed a degree in English at the University of Edinburgh in 1958 before moving to London to take up a job at the India Office Library.

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Rising in MI5’s spy ranks

Rimington fell into intelligence by chance. She was the wife of a diplomat, living in India in 1965, when she was offered a part-time clerical position by an MI5 operative in New Delhi. When she returned to London in 1969, she applied for a permanent role at MI5 and rose quickly, working in counter-espionage, counter-subversion, and counterterrorism.

Discussing her life in the shadows, Rimington said: “Inevitably there is a lot of frustration in intelligence work. You never know the whole picture, and for a lot of the time you are partly in the dark, waiting for the results of investigations, new information to come in, or some lucky breakthrough.

“Success comes from a combination of good solid investigation work, well-placed human sources, information from the public and good luck, all coordinated and put together by intelligent assessment and analysis.”

The press, particularly the tabloids, went full-out on their coverage when she was promoted to head MI5, she said. The agency, with the approval of the British government, published a booklet titled The Security Service which revealed publicly, for the first time, details of MI5’s activities, operations, and duties - as well as pictures and the identity of the Director-General.

“We had been protected by anonymity until then; the neighbors didn’t know what I did - and didn’t care, frankly. The press very easily found where we lived and suddenly they were there, camped outside the house. We had to sell the house and move eventually, and effectively live covertly. That was an upsetting start to my time as Director-General.”

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MI5’s chief turned spy novelist

Rimington followed her career in the Intelligence Service with her memoir, Open Secrets, which had a mixed reception but provided unusual insight into M15’s transformation from a stuffy, almost exclusively-male institution into a modern public service. About her early days working with her male colleagues, Rimington wrote: “Some seemed to do very little at all and there was a lot of heavy drinking.”

By the time she left her post in 1996, almost half the staff at MI5 were women.

Rimington then began a series of novels in which she drew on her experience.
The first of these, At Risk, established MI5 intelligence officer Liz Carlyle, in many ways a modern version of the author. Protagonist Liz Carlyle is an ambitious, talented 34-year-old working in the counterterrorism division and navigating the nuances and pitfalls of a male-dominated agency.

Rimington’s writing has been praised by security professionals including Lt. Col. Crispin Black, a Falklands War veteran who described Rimington’s debut novel and descriptions of of Jihadist terrorism as ‘believable and frightening’: “I was a soldier for 22 years and haven't exactly led a sheltered life, but the hairs on the back of my neck stood up on at least two occasions.”

The subsequent thrillers followed Carlyle’s career, creating an intriguing espionage series that some say provided a more accurate depiction of life in espionage than Mr. Bond ever managed.