Stella Rimington, the first female director of MI5 and the first head of the domestic spy agency to be publicly named, has died aged 90. She died on Sunday night 'surrounded by her beloved family and dogs and determinedly held on to the life she loved until her last breath', her family said in a statement.
MI5 paid tribute to Rimington. Ken McCallum, its current chief, said she was 'the first avowed female head of any intelligence agency in the world' and praised her for breaking 'through longstanding barriers'. He added: 'A visible example of the importance of diversity in leadership.'
An accidental spy, recruited in the mid-1960s as a typist when her husband, John, was posted to India on diplomatic service, Rimington rose through the ranks to end up as chief of the Security Service between 1992 and 1996. After her appointment as director general, she was the first chief of the agency to be named, although no photograph was supplied at first and the only image available was a blurry picture of her in the street wearing a distinctive raincoat.
During her time as MI5's director general she oversaw an agency making a wider transition from tackling the cold war threat to terrorism, and was the first agency chief to give a public lecture to the BBC. Such was her profile, she was considered a model for Judi Dench's portrayal of M, the fictional chief of sister agency MI6, in a series of James Bond movies.
After leaving MI5, Rimington principally became a writer. Her first book was a memoir, Open Secret, published in 2001, though there was a furious row about her decision to write an autobiography at the time. A series of novels followed, eight with Liz Carlyle, an MI5 officer as the lead character, and two more with Manon Tyler, a CIA agent.
