The Real Miss Moneypenny: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence With Dr. Claire Hubbard-Hall

Anglotopia Podcast | Discussing UK British Travel, History, Culture, London, British Slang, and More!

00:00 / 1:01:47

If I say “British spy,” you picture a man: James Bond, George Smiley, Kim Philby. And the one woman most people can name from that world is fictional — Miss Moneypenny, sitting outside M’s office, quietly in love with 007. But Miss Moneypenny was real, or at least the woman who inspired her was. Her name was Kathleen Pettigrew, personal assistant to three consecutive chiefs of MI6, and every secret in the wartime service passed across her desk. When someone asked whether she’d been the real Moneypenny, she replied: “I was Miss Moneypenny, but with more power.” In this episode, Jonathan Thomas is joined by Dr. Claire Hubbard-Hall, historian of secret intelligence, honorary associate professor of intelligence history, and author of Secret Servants of the Crown: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence (published in the UK as Her Secret Service). Claire explains how she found the pencil-crossed “Miss Pettaval” in Fleming’s first draft of Casino Royale; how Pettigrew and one colleague received every decrypted Enigma message sent from Bletchley Park to MI6; why the word “secretary” was a perfect cover for agent running, code work and courier duty; and how she tracked down women trained to leave no trace — reading margin notes and paper chits, then turning family historian and writing some 200 letters to surviving relatives. Plus: Rita Windsor, the MI6 officer in wartime Lisbon who got July Plot survivor Otto John out of Europe; the post-war “travel agency” she ran with Ina Molesworth; an incendiary briefcase carried by train to Bletchley Park and blown up on the lawn; the long zigzag road to the first female heads of MI5, GCHQ and MI6; and why Slow Horses gets it right.

Links

The Book

US edition published by Citadel (Kensington). ISBN 9780806543710. Published in the UK as Her Secret Service: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence.

Claire Hubbard-Hall

Places to Visit

Mentioned in the Episode

Related Anglotopia Episodes

Takeaways

Kathleen Pettigrew served MI6 from the late 1920s to the 1950s as personal assistant to three consecutive chiefs. In Ian Fleming’s first draft of Casino Royale, the character we know as Miss Moneypenny was originally called “Miss Pettaval” — crossed out in pencil and renamed. Fleming, a wartime naval intelligence officer, would have walked past Pettigrew’s desk outside Stewart Menzies’s office at 54 Broadway.
Pettigrew’s power was real. She helped set up MI6’s communications team at Bletchley Park in 1939, and back at headquarters she and a colleague, Miss Jones, personally received every decrypted Enigma message passed from Bletchley to MI6 — the gatekeeper deciding where intelligence went. She also accompanied Menzies to Churchill’s famous late-night meetings to take notes.
She came from nothing like Moneypenny’s polished upper-class background. Born in industrial East Bermondsey to a seal fur dresser, she grew up in a two-room flat above her parents’ shop off the Strand. Technical college, secretarial training and elocution lessons got her into Special Branch in the First World War — and from there, “through the looking glass.”
Career women like Pettigrew paid a steep price. Marriage bars meant choosing the job meant giving up marriage and children. MI5 dropped its marriage bar shortly after the Second World War; the Foreign Office and MI6 kept theirs until the early 1970s.
“Secretary” was the perfect cover. Behind the job title, women translated, encrypted and decrypted, ran agents, acted as agents and couriers, made secret inks, and produced photography for fake passes and disinformation. Women were there from the very beginning — MI6 employed its first female agent in 1909, the year it was founded.
Popular culture — and especially the endlessly retold, heavily sexualized Mata Hari legend — typecast women in espionage as seductresses and “Bond girls,” which helped erase the women doing the real work. Claire notes that the effort to write them back in has gathered real momentum over the past decade.
Researching women trained to leave no trace meant thinking like a counterintelligence officer. Because women created and handled the files rather than making the decisions recorded in them, Claire looked past the content to margin notes, pencilled initials and paper chits — then worked like a family historian, using wills, genealogy, the electoral roll and around 200 handwritten letters to surviving relatives, most of whom had no idea.
Rita Windsor, stationed at MI6’s Lisbon station in neutral Portugal, organized agent infiltrations, exfiltrations and defections. When Britain broke off contact with German resistance contact Otto John before D-Day, and the July 1944 plot against Hitler then failed, it was Windsor who got him out through Portugal and Spain to Britain. John dedicated his memoir to her.
After the war, Windsor and her colleague Ina Molesworth set up a high-end travel agency, International Services, taking small groups of well-connected travelers to Afghanistan, Moscow and — one of the first agencies allowed in — China. Claire’s research makes clear it was an MI6 cover. The details are in the book.
The road from Kathleen Pettigrew to the first female heads of Britain’s intelligence services was anything but straight: Jane Sissmore became MI5’s first female officer in 1929; Millicent Bagot became deputy director in the 1950s; Stella Rimington became the first female director general of MI5 in 1992; Anne Keast-Butler became the first female director of GCHQ in 2023; and Blaise Metreweli became the first female chief of MI6 in 2025.

Soundbites

“I was Miss Moneypenny, but with more power.” — Kathleen Pettigrew, as quoted in Jonathan’s introduction.
“These women in the book have absolutely fantastic names, written for spy stories.” — Claire on her cast of characters.
“Let’s not forget, these women were trained to evade everybody — even the historian coming later in the twenty-first century.” — Claire on the challenge of researching MI6 women.
“The first draft of that first Bond novel — the woman we now know as Miss Moneypenny was actually given a different name to start off with: Miss Pettaval. And you can instantly see the similarities between Pettaval and Pettigrew.” — Claire on the discovery that clinched it.
“All of the decrypted German Enigma messages coming out of Bletchley Park had to pass through MI6. MI6 was the gatekeeper, essentially. And the two women that received them were Miss Pettigrew and Miss Jones.” — Claire on the true scale of Pettigrew’s role.
“Secretary was this wonderful catch-all phrase that women in the Secret Services could use as cover, as camouflage. It was perfect, because nobody would suspect that they were doing anything different.” — Claire on the job title that hid everything.
“I did transform into a counterintelligence officer myself, in terms of the methodologies I had to adopt to try and get at these women.” — Claire on her research method.
“I probably sent out two hundred letters over the course of the project to family and relatives, and most of them wrote back — because they had no idea that Great Aunt Ethel had worked in any capacity within that clandestine world.” — Claire on turning family historian.
“The guy walked to the very edge of the lake, popped the briefcase down — and what do you think happened to the briefcase then? It blew up. It was an incendiary device, and a very unstable one. Can you imagine that going off on the train?” — Claire on Lois Hamilton and MI6’s Section D at Bletchley Park.
“When you take these historical moments, they are absolutely fantastic — hooray. But what we now need to see is that change continues, and that we actually see more female heads. Not with another massive gap before another woman is appointed.” — Claire on the first female chiefs of Britain’s intelligence services.

Chapters

00:21 Introduction — Miss Moneypenny was real, and the women written out of the spy story
01:28 Meet Dr. Claire Hubbard-Hall — Secret Servants of the Crown
01:46 KATHLEEN PETTIGREW — Why the book opens with her
02:18 The Hardest Women to Research — MI6 has never released its archive
03:25 Keith Jeffery’s Official History — Scouring it for breadcrumbs
04:01 Two Mentions — And years spent excavating one woman
05:08 What Secrets Passed Her Desk? — The Second World War and the Cambridge Five
05:39 Waiting for the Next Bond — And the case for a ginger 007
05:59 THE MONEYPENNY DISCOVERY — “Miss Pettaval” in the first draft of Casino Royale
06:53 Fleming, 54 Broadway, and the Desk Outside Menzies’s Office
07:46 HOW MUCH POWER DID SHE HAVE?
08:11 Bletchley Park Began as an MI6 Operation
08:52 Setting Up MI6 Communications in the Mansion
10:09 Back at Broadway — Personal assistant to Stewart Menzies
10:36 Every Enigma Decrypt — Pettigrew and Miss Jones as MI6’s gatekeepers
12:22 Late Nights With Churchill — Taking notes for the chief
13:23 WHAT IT COST THEM — Career women and the marriage bar
14:04 When the Marriage Bars Finally Fell — MI5 after the war, MI6 not until the 1970s
15:05 Going Against the Social Norms
16:04 Not Lois Maxwell — The real Moneypenny’s humble origins
17:10 East Bermondsey, a Seal Fur Dresser, and a Shop off the Strand
18:48 Secretarial College, Elocution, and Special Branch in the First World War
19:48 “Through the Looking Glass” — Into the secret world
19:55 THE WORD “SECRETARY” — The perfect cover
20:45 What They Actually Did — Translation, encryption, agent running, couriers, secret inks
21:45 Labour Shortages and Liberation — Opportunity in two world wars
22:44 WOMEN WERE THERE FROM THE START — MI6’s first female agent in 1909
23:11 Why They Were Forgotten — Popular culture, Bond, and bikinis
24:28 The Mata Hari Problem — How one sexualized legend infected everything
25:59 Writing Them Back In — A decade of recovering forgotten women
27:04 The Perfect Cover — Jonathan’s theory
27:20 HOW DO YOU RESEARCH WOMEN TRAINED TO LEAVE NO TRACE?
27:43 Becoming a Counterintelligence Officer
29:03 The Women Created the Files — Reading past the content
30:10 Margin Notes, Pencil Initials and Paper Chits
31:33 Turning Family Historian — Genealogy, wills and the electoral roll
32:19 Kathleen’s Parrots — A love of birds that began in a Strand pub window
33:06 Did the Parrot Have Security Clearance?
33:25 Two Hundred Letters — And families who had no idea
35:12 THE WOMEN WHO CHANGED OUTCOMES
35:40 Rita Windsor and Ina Molesworth — MI6’s duo, late 1920s to early 1970s
36:35 Rita Windsor in Lisbon — Infiltrations, exfiltrations and defectors
37:28 Otto John and the German Resistance
38:34 Britain Breaks Off Contact — And the plot goes ahead without them
39:18 The July Plot Fails — And Rita Windsor gets Otto John out
40:00 “He Owed His Life to Miss Rita Windsor” — The memoir dedication
40:56 Ina Molesworth — German specialist, and Rita’s lifelong friend
42:16 THE POST-WAR TRAVEL AGENCY — Afghanistan, Moscow, China, and an MI6 cover
43:52 What Did MI6 Think of the Book? — A signed copy for the former chief
45:07 The Official Secrets Act — Why these women would never have talked
46:04 BLETCHLEY PARK BEYOND THE CODEBREAKERS
47:09 Telling the Stories Not Yet Told
47:50 MI6 Women in the Mansion — Runners, German specialists and code makers
49:04 Making Codes, Not Breaking Them
49:32 Section D — The destruction section in the stables
50:41 Lois Hamilton’s Briefcase — Carried by train, blown up by the lake
52:58 Given the Shove — Section D finds another country house
53:31 FROM PETTIGREW TO STELLA RIMINGTON — Not a straight line
54:21 Jane Sissmore — MI5’s first female officer, 1929
54:45 The Second World War — Section heads and agent handlers, without the rank or pay
55:32 Millicent Bagot — First female deputy director of MI5
55:55 Stella Rimington, 1992 — And the rest of the firsts
56:05 Anne Keast-Butler at GCHQ and Blaise Metreweli at MI6
57:04 Firsts Are Fantastic — Now keep it going
57:26 WHERE TO GO — Places for Anglophiles to connect with these stories
57:50 Bletchley Park’s Intelligence Factory Exhibition
58:55 Read the Book
59:20 What to Watch — Slow Horses and Catherine Standish
01:00:14 Incompetence in the Intelligence Services — And how it all works out
01:00:30 Wrap-Up — Secret Servants of the Crown, Her Secret Service, and Friends of Anglotopia

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