Stella Rimington, First Woman to Lead U.K.’s MI5, Dies at 90
Widely regarded as the inspiration for the recast of the James Bond character “M,” she was the first British spy chief to be publicly named and photographed.
Stella Rimington, who battled a fiercely protective old boy’s network to become the first woman to lead MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence service, and whose tenure as the country’s spymaster was widely seen as an inspiration for James Bond’s first female boss in the movie franchise, died on Sunday. She was 90.
In her nearly 30-year career in MI5, Ms. 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.
When she was appointed in 1992 to head MI5, Ms. Rimington drew skepticism from longtime observers of the intelligence community, many of them men.
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