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Welcome to the Anglotopia Podcast, where we explore British travel history and culture. And I'm your host, Jonathan Thomas. If I say British spy, you picture a man: James Bond, George Smiley, Kim Philby. And if I say the one woman most people can name from that world, it's a fictional one, Miss Moneypenny, sitting outside M's office, quietly in love with James Bond. But here's the thing Miss Moneypenny was a real person, or at least the woman who inspired her was. Her name was actually Kathleen Pettigrew.
And she was the personal assistant to three consecutive chiefs of MI6. Every secret in the wartime service passed across her desk, and when someone once asked her if she'd been the real Moneypenny, she said, I was Miss Moneypenny, but with more power. For over a century, women have been at the very heart of British intelligence, not as decoration, but as the people who built and ran the machinery of the secret state. The clerks who curated the archives, the secretaries whose titles often cover far more,
The agent runners, the codebreakers, and the couriers who carried out the nation's deepest secrets. And almost all of them were written out of the story. My guest today has spent years writing them back in. Dr. Claire Hubbard-Hall is a historian of secret intelligence and an honorary associate professor of intelligence history. And her remarkable, acclaimed book is
Secret Servants of the Crown, the Forgotten Women of British Intelligence. Claire, welcome to the Anglotopia Podcast.
So let's start with where your book starts, with Kathleen Pettigrew and that extraordinary line, I was Miss Moneypenny, but with more power. Who was she and why did you choose to open with her story?
for starting with. So the reason that I began with Kathleen Pettigrew or Miss Pettigrew, I mean these women in the book have absolutely fantastic names written for spy stories. The reason I began with her is because my book covers the first half of the 20th century and several of Britain's secret services. And I my gut feeling at the very start of the project was that the women of MI6 or
Its official name, Secret Intelligence Service, Britain's foreign intelligence gathering organisation, that those women would perhaps be the hardest to research. And the number one reason being is that MI6 has never released any of its archival records to the public, whereas the other Secret Services have.
So I thought, gosh, that's gonna it's gonna be maybe a hard task to to try and track down these women in the archive when the records haven't been released. If they are named, they're usually redacted if there's correspondence with other secret services. and let's not forget, these women
were trained to evade everybody, even the historian coming later
in the twenty first century. So I thought, right, I'll start with women of MO MI6. So I took the Official History by Keith Jeffery, which is a fantastic book book that was written for MI6's centenary, and I scoured that for mentions of women. There isn't many.
but Keith Jeffery was kind enough to throw a few breadcrumbs for future researchers coming along and name dropped specific women. They didn't get a lot of mentions, but it was just enough for the flag to go up as in these are women who are of interest.
And one of those women who gets two mentions in the official history is Miss Pettigrew. And she was a long-serving MI6 secretary, a personal assistant kind of role to the chief, the head of MI6, and she served under several MI6 heads. And
I I mean almost the book didn't get written because I began with her. It was almost a dead duck in the water. but I it took me absolutely years to excavate her, but it became very, very clear from the beginning that this was a woman whose career spanned in MI6 from
the late twenties through to the nineteen fifties, a really crucial period of of British history in terms of what's going on with with the Second World War and various spy scandals that hit in the 50s, the Cambridge Five, Donald Maclean and Burgess, they they flee to Moscow at the beginning of the nineteen fifties. And she's there right at the centre of it all. And I thought, gosh, what secrets must have passed her desk. And
The most exciting thing, I think, was being a Bond fan. I mean, I think most of us that come to the world of spies are introduced to it through Ian Fleming's films, I would have thought in the first instance. some of us have have have have read the books, but the films have obviously got huge longevity and of course waiting for the new Bond to be named any moment with great anticipation.
I I will he be ginger? Will he will he be
that's well Fingers crossed, isn't it? Fingers crossed.
As a ginger I'm I'm I'm it's the last barrier in Britain, a j a ginger James Bond.
Well, it may be broken, it may be broken. We have to watch that space. but the most exciting thing was when I came across the information that when Ian Fleming sat down to write his first Bond novel, Casino Royale, in nineteen fifty-two, it's published a year later in nineteen fifty-three, that the first draft
Of that first Bond novel. The woman who we now know as Miss Moneypenny was actually given a different name to start off with, Miss Pettaval. And of course, you can instantly see the similarities between Pettivel and Pettigrew. And obviously, he was alerted to the fact of that similarity and changed the name and crossed it out in pencil.
And then wrote Miss Moneypenny next to it. So clearly, as an officer in naval intelligence during the Second World War, Ian Fleming would have had had to have gone to 54 Broadway, headquarters of MI6. He would have passed Kathleen's desk outside Stewart Menzies's office. Stewart Menzies was the head of MI6 during World War II, and he would have passed.
Kathleen Pettigrew's desk as he walked into Menzies' office. And so just that, in the in that instance, you know, you think, well, obviously Miss Moneypenny is a composite character based on perhaps more than one individual. But the more I started to research Kathleen Pettigrew, I was convinced that she was the inspiration for Fleming's Miss Moneypenny character.
So then just how much power did a woman in her position actually have? you you wrote that during the Second World War all the secret intelligence distributed by the chief of MI six passed through her. Unpack that for us. What did that mean to be that intermediary?
together. Well, I mean one of the key things that sort of cements her power starting at the very beginning of the Second World War is that some of your listeners may be familiar with Bletchley Park, the Allied home of code breaking during World War Two. Now that actually began as an MI6 operation. MI6 was the one that bought
the mansion at Bletchley Park and they were the one that set it all up. Obviously with Government Code and Cipher School, obviously doing the bulk of the work, but it was six that that actually set it up because they oversaw Government Code and Cipher School. They were sort of that umbrella organisation over the top. And Kathleen Pettigrew was there in the mansion. So everybody started off in the mansion and obviously as it grew during those first few few months,
they obviously had to expand into the huts, etc., that then obviously multiplied by mushrooms all over the site. But Kathleen was there on the first floor of the mansion, as to lots of several other MI6 women who were actually working on MI6 communications. So they were the ones that were responsible for communicating with MI-6 agents out in the field, in enemy-occupied land, and also.
with communicating with the MI6 officers who were under cover as passport control officers within the various embassies dotted around Europe. So she sets all the communications team up at Bletchley Park for MI6. So that in its first instance kind of gives you, you know, a good insight in terms of she is there, you know, over in overseer the communication.
That things were passing through her hands of critical importance. Now, when she goes back to the MI6 headquarters in London at 54 Broadway, she is acting
as the kind of the personal assistant to Stewart Menzies, the wartime head of MI6. And everything that he writes passes through her hands.
But the key thing which was really interesting and kind of a breakthrough moment when I was in the archives was the actual original e-crypt that came from Big Bletchley Park. Once they the Bletchley Park code-breaking machine had done its work of getting German Enigma machines, decoding
them and then translating them and working out what the messages were saying, they were then
All communicated back to MI6 headquarters. And the lady who received every single one of those communications, along with another colleague, Miss Jones, they received all of the communications they passed through their through their hands. So all of the decrypted German Enigma messages coming out
MI6. MI6 was the gatekeeper essentially. And the two women that received them were Miss Pettigrew and Miss Jones. And then of course the chain of processing that information was MI6 decided.
officers within MI6 decided who that information was going to be most of most importance to. Would it be the the Admiral out in so and so the Atlantic? Would it be going to an SOE circuit? Would it be going to the RAF, etc. And
So Atlantic would it be going to an SOE circuit, would it be going to the RAF, etc.?
so they were the ones that were in charge of sort of where this information would then end up. So I mean that to be in that position
wields a huge amount of importance and respect. And of course it's not men that are doing this, it's these two women, Miss Pettigrew and her colleague Miss Jones. and again everywhere Stewart Menzies went, Miss Pettigrew went. So if Stewart Menzies was
called by Winston Churchill, famously Winston Churchill liked to have his meetings in the early hours of the morning.
Basically with the church or like to have his meetings early hours of the evening.
Stewart Menzies would be summoned and Miss Pettigrew would accompany to take notes within those meetings. So you start to see that her role is completely one that is of so many different types of work, not just under that secretarial label of typing, filing, that we kind of associate with that role.
that she's also in charge of decrypted Enigma messages and obviously beyond that anything else in terms of
MI6 thing. so you there's something almost poignant about how completely she disappeared from the historical record. She never married, she never had children, she distanced herself from her own family to protect her cover, and MI6 eventually became essentially became her substitute family. So what did this work cost these women personally?
Yeah, no, so Kathleen Pettigrew belonged to the group of career women, those women who chose to have a career. And as you've identified, what I outlined in the book, that that choice also meant a sacrifice. It meant that they couldn't marry and therefore they couldn't have children. And the reason they couldn't marry is because obviously marriage bars were in place within MI6 or the marriage bar within the Foreign Office under which MI6 sat.
Now that marriage bar wasn't actually removed for the Foreign Office and MI6 until the early 1970s. For MI five it was a lot earlier. So MI5 was the is Britain's security service, so it deals with security, home security. That was just after the Second World War that the marriage bar was removed. But for women like Kathleen Pettigrew, it meant that that choice, that career choice, came with a with a great sacrifice, that she couldn't marry.
therefore have children. which is quite incredible really. I mean the level of patriotism and belief in the state and the job that you're doing I think really speaks a lot for for those career type women that took that decision.
No, absolutely. So they were going against the social norms, which were obviously that women when they're of a certain age get married and have children and basically look after their husbands who would be going out to work in some kind of various job. So yes, so it there was there was that sort of the the domestic setting was where women were supposed to have been seen.
But at the very start of the 20th century, those kind of ideas start to be ripped up by certain groups of women who want to march full ahead in terms of progress and to you know break free of those shackles of those societies' expectations. And Kathleen Pettigrew was one of those women. And what makes her story
really resonate with me in particular is that when we see Miss Moneypenny on the screen or if we read her in Ian Fleming's novels, I mean Lois Maxwell is the definitive Miss Moneypenny for me. That was when I was little, that was who was Miss Moneypenny. And she was the the longest Miss Moneypenny. And she had this kind of you know, her hair was always perfect, she had the pearls, she spoke very eloquently.
longest this weekend. And she had this kind of you know, her hair was always perfect, she had pearls, she spoke very eloquently.
you've got a sense that she was running up her classes, she perhaps didn't want to finish in school.
you got a sense that she was from the upper classes, she perhaps had gone to f a finishing school.
she was very debonaire and sophisticated. And Kathleen Pettigrew couldn't have been far different in the sense that she didn't enjoy that all those privileges that came with coming from the upper class of going to finishing school, etc. she was from a very humble background.
quite the opposite of what we expect Miss Moneypenny to have originated from. She came from East Bermondsey in London, which was quite a an industrial and and poor area at the time, the turn of the of the 20th century. And her parents made the decision very early on. Her father worked as a seal fur dresser, so the
the animal furs that used to come across the Atlantic on on boats would then travel on barges in London and then he would be part of the process of making these furs suitable to be made into fur coats, etc., or lots of other luxury items to be bought by by the upper classes at the time. So quite a not a particularly pleasant job, as you can probably imagine, dealing
but they made the decision together that he would give up that work and they bought a shop. They moved to the Strand, which is where all the theatres are. so if any of your your listeners come over to l to London regularly and see a show, it's most likely they'll be on the Strand. you can still see where Kathleen Pettigrew grew up, it was called George Court, a little cut through.
to the Adelphi Theatre and her parents sort of ran sort of a habadashery kind of grocery type shop and lived in the flat above, which was only two rooms, and really kind of worked their way up in society, I would say, to the lower
lived in the flat above, which was only two rooms. And really kind of worked very sort of see how good data.
middle classes. And just enough money that they could pay for Kathleen and her older sister to have a better form of of schooling, which then meant that she had a greater chance
Of attending like one of the technical training colleges at the time. So where she could learn secretarial skills or to become a stenographer. She could have elocution lessons to drop any London accent or twang that she might have. And from there he managed to then work her way into her first job, which was in Special Branch during the First World War. And she worked for a chapter.
called Basil Thompson, who was head of special branch, and he was in charge of catching and arresting all the German agents that were in Britain during the war. And that's really kind of where her story begins in terms of she goes, as John leCarré would say, steps through the looking glass
So and let's talk about how they they they titled these women as secretaries. your book makes a really striking argument about the word secretary, that it was often a wild understatement, even a kind of cover for the actual work that women like Pettigrew were doing. So can you kind of explain that and what were secretaries in the Secret Service really doing at these time periods?
So Secretary was this wonderful catch-all phrase that women in the Secret Services could use with as cover, as camouflage. It was perfect because nobody would suspect that they were doing anything different. And of course, as you can find out from reading the book, these women were not just sitting in the back offices and typing, etc. They were doing a huge
Amount of different types of roles. So they were doing everything from chan translating, decrypting, encrypting secure messages. They were running agents. They were agents themselves. They were acting as couriers for secret messages. They were doing more technical roles. They joined the First World War.
They were working producing secret inks to be used for for secret writing. they were working in photography again for making fake passes or creating things that might help in disinformation campaigns. I mean the list goes on. But of course this wonderful title of secretary of course hit all of that extraordinary work that they were doing.
and of course, during both world wars, the reason why these women were doing these work was obviously because the men had gone off to the fighting front, so there was a massive labour shortage in terms of who was gonna f step forward and fill these these roles, and of course women did. It was an opportunity for them to I would say probably have experiences that they'd never experienced before.
and probably were quite in some ways a liberating experience for them in terms of showing them
perhaps you know that they that they could do that kind of work and they could do it very well. and in some times, you know, the so called secretaries were far more intelligent than their male colleagues or
you know, the so called secretary is far more intelligent than their pale colleagues.
So yes, so it's it's an extraordinary time, both those world wars.
Well, and then that's and that's one of the most, I think, important points that you've that you make in your book is that women were there from the absolute beginning. women like Agnes Blake employed as MI6 first female agent in nineteen nine, the very year the service was founded. So it isn't a case of women arriving later and working their way in. They were always there. So why why was that sort of forgotten in the historical memory?
Yeah, no, that's a good question. And I think popular culture has probably is the is the is the is the main culprit in terms of why women have been forgotten or why how women have been cast, typecast, within the secret world. So I mean if we look at Fleming, I mean most of the women are especially the films, which obviously hold great
holding power in terms of forming forming images in in the public's mind of of secret intelligence work and women's role within that is that they are usually very scantily clad in bikinis. They're obviously incredibly sexy and glamorous and within a few seconds they end up in bed with double O seven. and it's this idea that that you know women are sexual objects
or if they are the enemy in in Fleming's secret world, then they are usually they use their their good looks and their sex appeal to seduce male officers and agents to get secrets. Now of course where does this idea stem from? It's not originally from Fleming. I think one of the key points is that Mata-Hari
unfortunately, who is that courtesan spy that everybody is famous with, a double, triple agent during World War One, who seduces German officers, etc., takes them to bed. You know, she's this wonderful kind of exotic dancer as well, and there are these fantastic images of her in very scantily clad kind of
Clothing which has become famous since. And it's kind of created this idea that women are vamp,
that they are sexual temptresses, you know, that they this is how women have kind of been portrayed. And of course, once Mata Hari's story, which of course, this is the story that has been told to us over the decades, since the end of the First World War, and it's been told by men who
male and so many male writers have constantly sexualized her and her story and carried on this kind of stereotype image that it's almost kind of infected everything else, which meant I think, that the idea that women could be doing anything else in the secret world just got sort of blown out of the water. But
I'm happy to say that that is now changing because my book is not the only
one in terms of that is you know, there are several of us at the moment. I've never been on trend in my life and I seem to have hit it just right with this book, but the I the I guess the pursuit of trying to identify forgotten women, women's stories in history.
And to empower them to write them back into the historical narrative and provide some kind of balance has really taken hold, I think, in the past ten years. and it and it looks like it's getting stronger and stronger, which is obviously a absolutely fantastic thing, but unfortunately, the world of TV and film is still churning out films
This very stereotypical Mata-Hari type esque characters.
if you think about it, it's it's a great cover for the serious women doing the serious work. Well you focus on on this fictional fictional bright object while we're here
Yeah, absolutely.
So and and and that and and and picking up on your research, so a as a historian, how do you even research people who were trained professionally to leave no trace? I mean, when whose records were all the their records were often classified destroyed or filed under a job title that hid really what they did. So what what kind of historical detective work do you have to do to find these people?
Yeah, I mean in the book I like in the whole process that you've just described of trying to get at these women that I almost had to I well I I did transform into a counterintelligence officer myself in terms of the the the methodologies that I had to adopt to try I know, yeah, yeah, to
to to to try and get at these women in six, five particularly the career women.
who y you get a feel immediately within the records that you know there's not a lot of records for a start and then you start to think, mm, okay, I'm on to something here. But I had to so a counterintelligence officer basically takes any kind of evidence, information, however small, and then you have to try and build up this picture, don't you? So which you can go off in any direction.
But essentially you're just trying to cast your net as wide as possible so that you can essentially get at the target, trying to understand who they are, how they operated, what their next moves were going to be, etc. So essentially that's how I had to work with the archival files because a lot of these women were the ones who created the files that I was looking at.
Because of course, at this time, the first half of the 20th century, there are very few women who make it to officer level. So women, for the large part, aren't making decisions within these organizations. And this is how organisations record: they record their decisions that are made. You know, you have correspondence, etc., and then decisions are made. Then reports and committees, etc. So the women are the ones who are.
Typing, who are filing, who are organizing, who are managing, who are archiving this, these what essentially we have that, for example, like MI5 files in the National Archives have been created by women. So I had to not look at the content of the correspondence and reports. I was looking for any evidence of
The women who'd created these files and handled them, any evidence on the files. So I found that within the margins of reports and correspondence with pencil, handwritten notes on. I found evidence of that with sort of paper chits, which don't exist now because we all work in a digital world. So that paper kind of office bureaucratic culture has now disappeared.
with comments, etc., initials. so again, not huge amounts of details. This is where coming
in like a counterintelligence officer, you know, you have to read between the lines and start to piece together
certain files that have been passed within an organisation, outside an organization. You get a feel for who these women
You can identify who they are from their initials. But then when I kind of explored all of that to the possibility that I could, the maximum, I thought I haven't actually got at the women. I don't really know who they were. How I going to breathe life into them for the reader and for myself? You know, I want I want to know who these women were as individuals.
I didn't want them to appear as two dimensional characters on the page. So I thought, right, I'm gonna have to change my tactic now. I'm gonna have to move away from the formal archive where the organisation's records are. And I'm gonna have to try and move away and see basically b work like a family historian. So I did genealogy, I did looked at family trees for these women.
I looked to see if there were any surviving family that were alive, so by that I was able to access Wills, which again was another interesting thing as a source for these women, because Wills are a fantastic resource to try and learn a little bit about the kinds of things that these women were into. So Kathleen Pettigrew, for example, she had this long kind of
long love of birds, which stemmed from when she was a little girl living in the strand, because the pub next door used to have these exotic birds, parrots, in the pub's windows, a way of enticing the drinkers to come in and in the very end of the Victorian the beginning of the Edwardian period. And she went on and she had pet parrots herself, parakeets, and she even had one in her office.
After the Second World War I found mention of her having a a a parrot pet parrot in the office, which again gives an indication of her standing.
did the parent have security clearance? Because they repeat everything.
That is a good question, isn't it? That is a good question. so and that was in her will. She'd left some money to the Royal Society for protection of birds. so just all those kinds of details. But I was looking for for family relatives and I was able to track them down if they were still alive on the electoral roll, and then I sort of engaged in a lengthy letter writing.
exercise. because a lot of these I couldn't find obviously any emails so I had to do the old fashioned way which was quite quite an enlightening exer exercise. And amazingly I think 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 were intrigued because they had no idea
that great Aunt Ethel or their mother or their
sister's niece had had worked in any capacity of that within that clandestine world. So it in a way I was adding to their own family histories of these women and they were absolutely enthralled at this at the prospect and and being able to learn more about these women who had either served during both world wars or who were the career women like Kathleen Pettigrew.
So yeah, so I had to adopt all these skills. So again, life I can to intelligence officer, literally go into everything, you know, from directories, wills, birth certificates, death certificates, to the official records that you have within within archives, oral testimonies that have been recorded. I use the full shebang to try and build up this picture and breathe breathe life into them.
So in in the book is full of astonishing women. Who are the ones you most want people to know about? The women who genuinely changed outcomes and yet whose names have largely banished from the discourse.
Yeah, that's a good question. Well I think I mean they are all favourites. All favourites in the book, but I think I think two of them stand out in particular because again they are MI6 women and they were kind of a duo act and their names were Ina Molesworth or Georgina Molesworth and Rita Windsor.
And their careers spanned from the late twenties through to the early seventies. I won't give too much away in terms of what they did after the war because you can read all about that amazing story in the book, and they do get several chapters. but their names are not well known. But Rita Windsor in particular was quite incredible, and I think there's more to come.
about her story as Cold War records become declassified. We have to wait with bated breath until that happens. But I think we've got more to come in terms of of of what she did in her career. But in terms of the Second World War and changing outcomes, she was stationed in Lisbon during the Second World War and she had a kind of quartermaster role which is by that
She did everything. she organized agent infiltrations and exfiltrations, and she also arranged defector arrangements in terms of how to get them out of whatever country they were in and to the UK, which of course meant travelling through various European countries, some of them which are quite sticky because they're occupied, they're not neutral.
But she was in Lisbon, which was neutral. Portugal was was neutral during World War II. And she worked alongside another chap in this instance, where they were both in charge of handling an an agent called Otto John. And Otto John is I mean, this is all told within the book, but over the series of several meetings where he would come.
travel from Germany to Lisbon to meet them and they would meet at various other points as well. And he was basically providing them with information about German resistance. And by that I mean Stauffenberg's plots. And I think there was some inference that the British were trying to maintain contact
with the resistance, you know, these these German intelligence officers and high up army officers that had decided to take a stand against Hitler, try and remove him from power. But at some point at the beginning of the year in nineteen forty four, the Brits decided that they were gonna stop communication
with Otto John because they had decided that the outcome of the war would be decided by force, i.e. D do, that would happen in June. So they broke off communication and Otto John, they informed Otto John that that was it, they weren't going to engage in any more communications with him and the German resistance. So they he went straight back to Germany and you get the first attempt by the plotters
So they broke off communication, and Otto John they informed Otto John that that was it, they weren't going to engage in any more communications with him and German resistance. So then he went straight back to Germany, and you get the first attempt by the plotters,
which fails, and then of course you get the more famous second attempt which we know about in
which fails, and then of course, you get the more famous second attempt, which we know about in the July
plot, but of course, Hitler survives the bomb blast, and all the resistance members are rounded up. However, Otto John manages to escape, and the reason he escapes and travels through Lisbon, through Spain, and eventually.
manages to make his way to the UK and then America is because of Rita Windsor, his handler. So she makes sure that even though that they had stopped communication with him as an agent, that they still had some kind of responsibility and they actually got him out. And in his memoir, he actually dedicates the memoir to to Rita saying that you know he owes her he owes
Owed her life to Miss Rita Windsor, which I think gives you a really kind of fascinating window in terms of obviously we don't know the exact details of how Otto John and how Rita Windsor managed to work that magic to get him out into safety, but the impact that these women had on.
Particular individuals and in this case she was handling this agent and that responsibility
had extended. Maybe it might have been the the head head headquarters decision, but she certainly made sure that it happened and it was no easy feat at all to exfiltrate an agent like Otto John.
that yeah, so that was Ina Molesworth, and she was kind of Rita's sidekick. and she was a German
specialist, so she basically worked in the MI6 office. she had various postings, Geneva, and then ended up in Lisbon with Rita Windsor, and they were lifelong friends for the rest of their lives. But she worked in the office, in church in charge of overseeing communications.
And obviously, she was able to translate German messages, etc., and also write German messages if if needed. but she was also working with Rita, and I and I think I've you know, again, because it's MI6, there's no files to go from. You've just got little bits of here, bits of pieces of evidence here and there. But she clearly was also involved in that quartermaster kind of role.
of organizing travel essentially for for agents, defectors and allied intelligence officers that needed to move around Europe and to to America. And she was the one that was in charge of that with Rita Windsor. Now the reason why I particularly admire them is for what they did post war, which I will just say very, very quickly is that at the end of the Second World War,
Rita and Ina left MI sit supposedly and set up a very high end travel agency called International Services Services. And they weren't going to kind of what we would probably class as regular kind of holiday destinations. They were going to very kind of places that yeah, wouldn't be, I don't think, on
on our number one list of destinations. So places like Afghanistan, places like Moscow, places like China, I think they were the first one of the first travel agencies to be allowed by China once it opened its doors very briefly in the early 60s. And they would take very small group groups of I guess you would say foreign office type people who had retired.
So places like Afghanistan, places like Moscow, places like China, I think they were the first one of the first travel agencies to be allowed by China for scope is not very briefly in the early 60s. And they would take very small group groups of I guess you could say foreign office type
people who had retired.
high end holidays and they were able to offer introductions to certain individuals. But it's very clear once I started looking at this travel agency that actually it was an MI6 cover. And that's all I'm gonna say because I'll let the readers find out what these two amazing women got up to
And they were able to offer introductions to certain individuals. But it's very clear once I started looking at this travel agency that actually it was an MI6 for that agency. And that's all I'm gonna say, but although the readers are two of these women got up to
and forgive the indiscreet question, but I'm kinda wondering what did MI six think of the book? And did they tap you on the shoulder like, No, could you not talk about that? Yeah, no, I
no, I I I haven't received any knocks on the door,
etc. But I did the I did a book festival in the summer and the the day after I had appeared was the former head of MI six, Richard Moore. and I think he was hoping to come the day before to meet me.
Which is slightly terrifying and I didn't
think about. But he had bought a copy of my book and asked for it to be signed and said he was a big fan. so I just wrote a very witty comment in the book as in here's some more secrets told. but but I mean I like to think that you know, it's a very positive history.
comment in the book as it appears to Walsi was told. but but I mean I like to think that you know it's a very
who who never sought recognition in any way, shape or form. I don't think
It yeah, it would be interesting. I mean, all the women here in the book obviously are deceased. So I've never none of them were alive to be to be interviewed. And I'm not sure if they had have been alive they would have been that cooperative because these were especially the MI six women, you know, they the career women, they you know, they signed the Official Secrets Act like every other woman had done and they took it incredibly seriously.
these were especially the and six women, you know, they career women, they you they signed these new seats out quite every other and they took it incredibly seriously.
even if you look at the the Bletchley Park veterans, even when they were
I mean even if you look at the the Bletchley Park veterans, even when they were
informed that they could share what they did, they could divulge what they did at Bletchley Park, some of them still chose not to because they'd signed the official secret set. So which is quite remarkable because I can't keep a secret to save my life.
Well, let's talk about Bletchley Park 'cause it's it's it's famous for the thousands of women who worked there code breaking. But you kind of go beyond that familiar image. So what don't people understand about the women of Bletchley and the effect they had even now?
Well, yeah, so I mean the the the story of Bletchley Park and the women's roles, I think there's been an there's been quite a lot of books, haven't there, on this? And the veterans themselves have written books about their their wartime service. And I for the most part those women were women who worked for Government Code and Cipher School, which, you know, transformed into G C HQ. So Britain's
equivalent of the NSA, listening into to communications, etc. and then a number of the women would donned uniforms, the Wrens, etc., who would operate the bomb machines that would help quicken up the decrypting process as the war progressed. So I didn't want to sort of tell those stories that had been already told. I mean the whole
book and my aim was to find the stories that hadn't been told and to focus on those. you know, because obviously certain women have already received a lot of attention. So for example, the female SOE agents who were infiltrated into Occupy France, they incredibly courageous and brave and they've had lots of attention and rightly so, but there are a huge number of other women that
That also need to have a bit of light shone on them. So when it came to Bletchley Park, because obviously Kathleen Pettigrew, MI6, was at the very starting point of Bletchley Park's story in September nineteen thirty-nine, it then made me think, well, she's working with other women who are also MI6.
John on them. So when it came to Bletchley Park, because obviously Kathleen Pettigrew, MI six, was that very starting point of the Bletchley Park story in September nineteen thirty nine, it then made me think, Well she's working with other women who are also MI six and are
And are working in the in the mansion doing various jobs. And you have the women,
Ina Molesworth, for example, temporarily was at Bletchley Park for a couple of months after she had made it out from Geneva
Ina Molesworth, for example, temporarily was at Bletchley Park for a couple of months after she had made it out from Geneva.
before she went to Lisbon. She was there working obviously as a German specialist in on the first floor of the mansion. but you've got everybody from the very young women
who were acting as runners for MI6 in Bletchley Park. So, you know, carrying information from one room to another or one room to a in the mansion out to a hut, etc. you know, and these are sort of 17, 18-year-old women who have just found themselves in those in those roles. And then
who were acting as runners for MI6 inflexion parks who you know carry information from one room to another or one room to the mansion out to a hut, etc. You know, and these are sort of 17, 18 year old women who have just found themselves in those in those roles. And then
is that we obviously associate it with code breaking. So the MI six women are for the main part
making codes at Bletchley Park because they're obviously making codes for our agents out in the field. Whereas the bulk of Bletchley Park's work, you know, ninety nine percent of it is to do with enemy decryption.
The thing that really surprised me was that Bletchley Park at the very start of the war, Bletchley Park, the behind the mansion is a series of I don't know what you would call them, sort of stables that were transformed into workshops. And the people who were working in these workshops were MI6s, Section D.
Now the D stands for destruction. So these were the
Section D would become part of SOE later on. But these were the guys who were responsible for making the big bombs. So making exploding devices, bombs, etc., and trying to camouflage incendiary devices in
from these are the guys who were responsible for making the big bombs. So making exploding devices, bombs, etc. And trying to camouflage incendiary devices in
briefcases or whatever. So they're carrying out this work in the workshops behind the mansion, but they're also using the the grass areas that's in the front of the mansion to sort of test some of these devices. And
within the Imperial War Museum's archive, which nobody'd looked at before, this there's a lady called Lois Hamilton. And she was a secretary, that label again is secretary
for a
Arthur Langley, who was in charge of devices. And she had been asked to travel with this briefcase from London on the train to Bletchley Park. She hadn't been told anything else about this this briefcase, and this is she's telling this in an in an oral history after the war had ended.
So she tells how this story of how she was asked to carry this briefcase from London to Bletchley Park. And then when she got to Bletchley Park, she was met by one of the Section D chaps who had left his workshop to meet her from the train station. They'd walked into Bletchley Park. The lake
To Bletchley Park. She was met by one of the Section D chaps who left his workshop to meet her from the train station. They walked into Bletchley Park.
popped the briefcase down, and what do you think happened to the briefcase then? It blew up, yes.
It blew up into flames. It was an incendiary device and a very unstable one. I mean can you imagine that going off on the train
Which of course she was mortified that this is what she had been carried, but it was a test really to see
Kind of you know, this sort of experiment would actually work out in the field. How stable would the incendiary be within the briefcase? So you've got you know the poor code breakers who are working in the mansion on the ground floor and in Hut one, and then you've got the big bangs
like that happening on the lake out the front, which which must have been incredibly off-putting, and I think it was because.
They were given the shove after a couple of months. they went and found another stately house not so far away, which they could just devote purely to two devices. But it kind of gives you a very different picture of what Bletchley Park was like, you know, in terms of what we've been told. that there were also these women there carrying incendiary devices camouflaged in in briefcases, which exploded.
four century devices that
are large in three which exploded. So y your book travels all the way to Stella Rimington, who became the first female director of MI five in twenty tw nineteen ninety two. is can you draw a straight line from cat women like Kathleen Pettigrew to Stella, or is that too easy?
Yeah, unfortunately that's too easy. It would have been nice, wouldn't it, if if you could draw if you could draw a straight line. no, I mean it was a very zigzag and it was a very because it was zigzagged, it was a very slow process. I mean the with Stella Rimington, nineteen ninety-two, first female head of any of Britain's intelligence services, she was MI five. if you look within MI five,
I mean if we kind of just chart some kind of, I guess if you want to call them progress points. So we have a lady called Jane Sissmore, who would marry, one of the exceptions to the rule would marry just before, days before World War II broke out, she would become Jane Archer. But Jane Sissmore in 1929 became MI5's first female officer. So that's 1929.
As you progress within MI5 into the Second World War, you have women who are heading up sections, women who are who actually for the first time become agent handlers, but unfortunately they are not given the same rank and pay that their male colleagues are. So again, this is it's a it's a tale old as
sort of tall thing in terms of when it comes to women in their fight for progress in whatever spectrum that they're in. so second one they start to kind of break barriers.
as as told, isn't it, in terms of when it comes to women in their fight for progress in whatever sector that they're in. so Second World War they start to kind of break barriers,
but obviously not in terms of the same pay
and the same rank. You then get at the end of the Second World War, I think it's nineteen
52 or 53 that a lady called Millicent Bagot becomes the first deputy director of of MI5. and then there are various other points beyond that, but it takes a long time to get to Stella Rimington in 1992. And then if we look for other Britain secret services, you have GCHQ.
and Anne Keast-Butler, who was appointed
It's 2023 as the first female head of GCHQ, and then obviously we have in last place the first woman, the first female chief of MI6 to be appointed. Blaise Metreweli. and then of course, in third place.
You've got MI6, first female chief, Blaise Metreweli, who is appointed in twenty twenty.
five last year. so again, you know, it's taken a long time, hasn't it? You know, well over a hundred years for MI six, but we got there in the end. But of course, you know, when you take these moments, these historical moments, they are absolutely fantastic, you know, hooray. But what we now need to see is that
that change continues and that we actually see more female heads. You know, not with an another massive gap before another woman is appointed.
So for our listeners, many of whom are American Anglophiles who love this kind of history and are also kind of wedded to the popular image of British intelligence from media, are there places they can go and things they can see that will connect them to these stories? Is it Bletchley Park, the archives, or any or anywhere else interesting that they might want to visit?
yeah, good question. Well, Bletchley Park is, I think, perhaps my favourite spy site. So I would definitely recommend having a visit to Bletchley Park and in particular heading to their wonderful exhibition called The Intelligence Factory, where I think that is the women's voices in terms of Bletchley Park when it transforms into this intelligence factory. It's driven.
by women, female power, and their voices within that exhibition are captured fantastically from the young to the old, whatever role, it's absolutely visible from the moment you step through the door into that block and that particular exhibition. So yes, so I would absolutely head to the Intelligence Factory exhibition at Bletchley Park as a key place, I think.
in terms of women's voices within the secret world of World War Two. Anywhere else, think, obviously head to my book. think that book is also is a great place to learn about those women's names who won't be familiar, but their stories are absolutely intriguing and eye-opening.
in terms of what was going on in the first half of the 20th century. And yeah and I think probably if I can say if anybody is going to watch anything on TV in terms of spy films or TV stories, TV series, would absolutely 200 % recommend Slow Horses, which
does the best in terms of portraying what real women were like in the intelligence world that I have captured in my book and in particular massive shout out to for the character Catherine Standish.
actually I think it will be out before this comes out. So I will have to edit that out. But
yeah, it's a fantastic show and it also it shows how incompetent men and women can be in the intelligence services.
absolutely, but how it all works out in the end. Hooray!
So, Claire, this has been genuinely eye-opening. I don't think I'll ever watch a Bond film or Slow Horses or read a spy novel the same way again, knowing the real women who stood behind the myth. Thank you so much for joining us on the Anglotopia podcast. The book is Secret Servants of the Crown, The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence. It's out now, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. We will put links to it in the show notes and to Claire's work in the show notes.
And I should also mention that it has a different title in the UK, and it's called Her Secret Service. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, like, or comment and tell us which forgotten figure from British history you'd most like to see get their due over on YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook. And if you love the Anglotopia podcast, please consider joining the Friends of Anglotopia Club, where you can get early access to new episodes and connect with other Britain enthusiasts. So join us next time.
As we continue to explore the people, places, and stories that make Britain's history and culture so endlessly fascinating to discover. Thank you again, Claire.
