Dame Stella Rimington DCB was an author and former Director General of MI5

She held the Director General position at MI5 from 1992-96 and was not only the domestic counter-intelligence and security agency’s first female DG, but the first whose name was publicised on appointment. Rimington retired from MI5 in 1996, and was then a non-executive director for companies such as Marks & Spencer and BG Group. She published her memoirs, Open Secret, in 2001. In July 2004, her first novel, At Risk, about a female intelligence officer, was published. Her other novels include Secret Asset (2006), Illegal Action (2007), Dead Line (2008), Present Danger (2009), The Geneva Trap (2012) and Close Call (2014). 

She was Chair of the judging panel for the Man Booker Prize in 2011, a year in which she and her fellow judges were widely criticised for focusing on ‘readability’ rather than literary quality. Rimington responded during her speech at the Booker ceremony by comparing British literary critics to the KGB.

Dame Stella Rimington died on 3 August 2025, aged 90.