DARK SECRETS: Stella rimington - The Real Truth

Noteworthy and influential people who've died this year

August saw the death of Stella Rimington, the first female head of Britain’s MI5 intelligence agency

The Independent UK · Sep 3, 2025

Spy novelist Stella Rimington, the first female head of MI5, was a ‘true trailblazer’

Dame Stella Rimington, former director general of the UK’s domestic counter-intelligence and security agency, MI5, and author of several spy thrillers, has died this week, aged 90.

The Conversation · Aug 7, 2025

Remembering MI5’s first female director general and author Dame Stella Rimington

The former head of the British Intelligence service and author Stella Rimington was the first female (and publicly-named) MI5 chief, as well as the inspiration for Dame Judi Dench’s M in the James Bond films. She died aged 90.

Euronews · Aug 7, 2025

Stella Rimington: The spy who brought MI5 out of the shadows

Britain’s first woman spymaster saw an era of greater openness in the intelligence services.

Evening Standard · Aug 4, 2025

MI5’s first female director general Dame Stella Rimington dies aged 90

She is widely credited as the model for Dame Judi Dench’s M in the James Bond franchise

The Independent UK · Aug 4, 2025

Dame Stella Rimington, first female director general of MI5, dies aged 90

She is widely credited as the model for Dame Judi Dench’s M in the James Bond films.

Evening Standard · Aug 4, 2025

For years, I suspected MI5 interfered in the miners’ strike. The truth was even more shocking than I thought

A document buried in the National Archives reveals how the security service abused its power to help the government win, says journalist and author Mark Hollingsworth

The Guardian - UK · Mar 7, 2024

'The wilderness of mirrors': 70 years since the first James Bond book, spy stories are still blurring fact and fiction

The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning.

The Conversation · Apr 12, 2023

MI5 missed early chance to expose Soviet agent Kim Philby, files reveal

British intelligence viewed Flora Solomon as ‘inconsequential’ in 1951 but her evidence later ‘clinched’ case against Philby

The Guardian - UK · Oct 11, 2022

Stella Rimington: ‘I fell into intelligence by chance’

The 86-year-old novelist and former head of M15 on the Blitz, claustrophobia – and a new lease of life in her marriage

The Guardian - UK · Apr 23, 2022