MORE MISS MONEYPENNY THAN MATA HARI WOMEN SPIES THROUGHOUT THE DECADES

THEY LOOKED LIKE ORDINARY HOUSEWIVES, MOTHERS AND SECRETARIES IN SENSIBLE CLOTHES AND STURDY SHOES. BUT THESE INNOCUOUS WOMEN WERE EMBARKED ON COURAGEOUS AND OFTEN TREACHEROUS MISSIONS AS SECRET AGENTS

- WORDS MAGGIE RITCHIE

The popular image of the female spy has been shaped by glamorous figures like Mata Hari, the exotic dancer and double agent played on screen by Greta Garbo. Or femme fatales like the Soviet agent Tatiana Romanova, whose mission was to seduce James Bond in From Russia with Love, or Jennifer Lawrence's Dominika in the film Red Sparrow, a Russian agent trained in sexspionage.

In reality, most female spies used their wits rather than their looks. They stayed under the radar while they gathered information under the noses of the men who couldn't imagine that these mousey, respectable women could be stealing their secrets and relaying them back to their enemies.

The press dubbed Melita Norwood "the spy who came in from the Coop" when she was finally exposed at the age of 87 for her role as the last of the atomic spies, betraying Britain's secrets to help the Soviet Union catch up in the nuclear arms race. After the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, British and American intelligence judged the Soviet Union would be able to make a nuclear bomb by 1953 at the earliest, but the Soviets tested an atomic bomb in 1949, marking the onset of the Cold War.