Barbara Woodward

She's the favourite to be MI6's first female boss, but don't expect Judi Dench's M.

- By Andrew Anthony

Any day now, the Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, will have its first female head - a position traditionally referred to, with a certain cryptographic drama, as "C".

There are said to be two remaining candidates for the role, both of them women. One is from within MI6 itself, and therefore will remain nameless unless she lands the job (only the chief of the service is made known to the public).

The other is 64-year-old Barbara Woodward, the permanent representative of the UK to the UN and said to be favourite for the job. Inevitably, she has been compared to Judi Dench's M, the James Bond screen version of the MI6 boss who broke through the glass ceiling 30 years ahead of the real-life version.

Aside from her tendency to wear her hair short, Woodward has little in common with Dench's M. There's none of the tart delivery or schoolmarmish asides. Former colleagues talk of her "easygoing, pleasant" manner and her "open" style of management.

She's "straight down the line", says Sarah Hildersley, who was a desk officer at the Know How Fund when Woodward, who joined the Foreign Office in 1994, was deputy head of the operation. The fund aimed to realise Margaret Thatcher's dream of transforming the countries of the former Soviet bloc into market economy liberal democracies.

At the time, says Hildersley, it was rare to find women in senior positions at the Foreign Office.

"It was a tricky environment," she says. "You had to be very self-confident and just crack on with the job. She's someone who really studies and knows her material. She is a details kind of person, decisive and clear in her thought process."