Ex-High School girl inspired Judi Dench's Bond boss M in movies

FORMER MI5 CHIEF STELLA RIMINGTON DIES AT 90

- By GAVIN CORDON, PA

DAME Stella Rimington, first female director general of MI5, has died aged 90.

The former Nottingham schoolgirl dubbed the “housewife superspy” when she became chief of the intelligence service, is widely credited as the model for Dame Judi Dench's M in the James Bond films. She was born in 1935 and died on Sunday night. When her father got a job in Ilkeston, the family moved to the area and Stella attended Nottingham High School for Girls. In 2009, she received an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Social Science from Nottingham Trent University in recognition of her support for openness about the work of the secret service.

In a statement, her family said: “She died surrounded by her beloved family and dogs and determinedly held on to the life she loved until her last breath."

IN the summer of 1967 Stella Rimington, bored wife of a junior diplomat in New Delhi, was approached by another British official with a proposition: would she be interested in “helping out” in his office?

The author of the request was “a baronet and a bachelor” best known among staff at the British High Commission for his “excellent Sunday curry lunches” and for “driving round Delhi in a snazzy old Jaguar’.

He was also senior liaison officer for MI5 - the British security service ~ in the Indian capital and, when the diplomat’s wife accepted his offer of employment. it marked her entry into the shadowy world of intelligence.

It was a curiously low-key start for a remarkable 29-year career marked by a series of “firsts” - culminating in her appointment as the UK’s first female spymaster.

In that time she found herself pitted against Russian espionage agents and IRA terrorists as well as, more controversially, domestic “subversives” including the leaders of the 1984 miners’ strike.

As the first female director general of MI5 - and the first to be named publicly - she did much to bring the service out of the shadows.