Dame Stella Rimington, the first female director general of MI5 and an author of spy novels, died August 3 at age 90, the New York Times reported. Rimington was chair of the Booker Prize judges in 2011 and was also considered the inspiration for Dame Judi Dench's portrayal of M in the James Bond films. She was the author of 12 spy novels, the most recent of which was The Hidden Hand.
After her university years, Rimington moved to India in 1965 with her husband, who was first secretary (economic) for the British High Commission in New Delhi. She began to work for MI5 as a part-time clerk for the Security Service, and joined the permanent staff of MI5 when she returned to England. She rose to hold the position of director general from 1992 to 1996. After her retirement, she was made a dame commander of the Order of the Bath in the 1996 New Year Honors list.
Rimington published a memoir, Open Secret, in 2001 and At Risk, the first in her book series starring MI5 intelligence officer Liz Carlyle, in 2004. Other Carlyle novels include Secret Asset (2006), Illegal Action (2007), Dead Line (2008), Present Danger (2009), Rip Tide (2011), and The Moscow Sleepers (2018). In addition to The Hidden Hand, her other Manon Tyler novel is The Devil's Bargain (2022).
During her career in MI5, Rimington "faced obstacles in that male-dominated world every step of the way, even into her retirement, when she was chastised by intelligence veterans for publishing memoirs that, in the end, turned out to be revealing of her career path but not much else," the Times noted.
"It did not matter that I had a degree, that I had already worked for several years in the public service, at a higher grade than it was offering, or that I was 34 years old," she wrote in Open Secrets. "The policy was that men were recruited."
"As the first avowed female head of any intelligence agency in the world, Dame Stella broke through longstanding barriers and was a visible example of the importance of diversity in leadership," Ken McCallum, the current MI5 director general, said in a statement.
In interviews, "reporters were excited to ask the talkative former MI-5 spymaster for her thoughts on James Bond," the Times noted, adding that in a 2012 interview she said that Bond was "extremely well trained, but the difficulty is that he doesn't seem to know where the boundaries lie."
