It is hard to believe that, once upon a time, Dame Stella Rimington nearly did not have a career at all. As a child, she hankered after an adventurous job. “When people asked me what I wanted to be I used to say an airline pilot or a fireman – all the things that women couldn’t actually do in those days.”

The reality was less straightforward. “I come from an era when women were expected to get little jobs to keep us occupied until we got married, or at the very latest, had children,” she says.

It almost happened like that. After graduating (“people used to say to my parents ‘surely you’re not going to send that girl to university, she’ll only get married’ ”) she became a historical archivist. Then her husband was posted to India to work for the British High Commission and she gave up her job to follow him. “I thought I was never going to work again. I was doing all the things that diplomats’ wives did; running jumble sales and making jam.”

Then came the tap on the shoulder. Rimington was recruited as a part-time clerk-typist in the MI5 offices in Delhi. “The only thing I knew about the service was that it had something to do with spying. I’d been reading Kipling’s Kim so I thought it might be a bit like that.”

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BACKGROUND

• Cast the net far and wide

• Work and play in harmony

• Even top jobs can be flexible for everyone

• Guided path to a higher rank

BACKGROUND

• Reaching out to the world

• A foot in every continent

• More than one of the boys

• A powerhouse of enthusiasm

Rimington did not expect the job to go anywhere. She was wrong – it was the height of the Cold War, and she found herself hooked. Returning to the London headquarters, however, she was disappointed. “I realised that the men were very much in charge and the women were definitely second class. We even had our own career structure, as assistants.”

With the advent of sex legislation in the 1970s, things started to change. We saw young men who had been to the same universities as us being recruited into top level jobs, while we were assistants. So we mounted the quiet revolution and said, ‘we’re not going to put up with this’.”

Gradually, a few women started to be promoted and Rimington began to take her career seriously, rising through the ranks. She cites two main obstacles: not being taken seriously as a woman and having to balance work with two children. “That was difficult, without a doubt. It still is and there hasn’t been a solution. And never will be, in my opinion, unfortunately.”

She went on to become the first female director-general of MI5. On being given the top job, she was told that the Government had decided to make her name public, to answer concerns that the agency was a shadowy service with little relevance after the end of the Cold War. “We knew that we were needed even more, because of the rise of terrorism. It was well and truly time to explain ourselves.”

She has been credited with a legacy of greater openness at MI5. On a personal front, it was less easy. Media attention was so intense that the family had to move house. “It was very difficult, particularly for my 17-year-old daughter, who had to get used to press at the front door and the possibility of the IRA at the back door.”

The increase in transparency has brought greater diversity. “I don’t think it is a male preserve any longer,” she says. “When I left it was 50:50, although women were not evenly spread through the ranks.” A second female director-general, Eliza Manningham-Buller, helped to bring about change at the top, she says.

Now 73, Rimington may never become a fireman or a pilot, but she has achieved several ambitions since her retirement. The first was to learn more about business and she has worked as a nonexecutive director for Marks & Spencer and BG Group. The second was to write thrillers.

Rimington is now on her fifth spy novel and “absolutely loving” it. “In 30 years of the service I saw plenty of potential plots.” Her fourth, Dead Line, out this month, is the latest to feature her heroine Liz Carlyle, a plucky MI5 officer with a taste for adventure. Is she based on anyone we know? “Probably,” she smiles.

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