Stella Rimington, the first female director of MI5 and the first head of the domestic spy agency, has passed away at the age of 90.
Her family, in a statement, revealed that 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."
Recruited in the mid-1960s as a typist when her husband, John Rimington, was posted to India on diplomatic service, Stella 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 photographs were made public, and the only image available was a blurry picture of her in the street wearing a distinctive raincoat.
In a 2011 interview, she discussed her secret career, noting, "I'm proud that I was the first woman DG and that, during the time I was there, MI5 changed from being an old-fashioned closet organisation."
During her time as MI5’s director general, she oversaw the agency addressing a wide range of concerns from the Cold War threat to terrorism and was the first agency chief to give a public lecture to the BBC.
After leaving MI5, Stella 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.
Born as Stella Whitehouse in 1935, she moved from London to Barrow-in-Furness aged four. She married John in 1963, and they had two daughters, but the couple separated in 1984.
