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'The story of MI5's transformation - is fascinating. So, too is Rimington's account of her rise in what was very definitely a man's world' Guardian 'The story of MI5's transformation - is fascinating. So, too is Rimington's account of her rise in what was very definitely a man's world.' Guardian ____________________________ The eye-opening memoir from the first female Director-General of MI5 Stella Rimington worked for MI5 between 1969 and 1996, one of the most turbulent and dramatic periods in global history. Working in all the main fields of the Service's responsibilities - counter-subversion, counter-espionage and counter-terrorism - she became successively Director of all three branches, and finally Director-General of MI5 in 1992. She was the first woman to hold the post and the first Director-General whose name was publicly announced on appointment. In Open Secret, she continues her work of opening up elements of the work of our security services to public scrutiny, revealing the surprising culture of MI5 and shedding light on some of the most fascinating events in 20th century history from the ultimate insider viewpoint. ____________________________ Stella Rimington is also the author of the novels At Risk and Secret Asset.

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9780099436720

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The memoirs of the former head of MI5 who worked from 1965 to 1996 in all the main fields of the Service's activities - counter subversion, counter-espionage and counter-terrorism and successively became Director of all three branches.

Was she right to publish? Most certainly. If we are to have a mature attitude to our intelligence services, we need this kind of inside account - it is vital in stripping away mystique and building understanding Daily Telegraph Stella Rimington deserves our thanks for resisting the bullying of the cabinet office and many of her colleagues and associates in Whitehall, and pushing on to publication New Statesman She writes in a refreshingly self-deprecating style of juggling the roles of single parent and chief spook Independent on Sunday

"Was she right to publish? Most certainly. If we are to have a mature attitude to our intelligence services, we need this kind of inside account - it is vital in stripping away mystique and building understanding * Daily Telegraph * Stella Rimington deserves our thanks for resisting the bullying of the cabinet office and many of her colleagues and associates in Whitehall, and pushing on to publication * New Statesman * She writes in a refreshingly self-deprecating style of juggling the roles of single parent and chief ""spook"" * Independent on Sunday *"

This is the book Whitehall did not want anyone to read, and as a former Director-General of the Security Service, with twenty-seven years' experience of the organisation, one can understand the government's reluctance to encourage insiders to make indiscreet disclosures. However, Dame Stella is the most unlikely person to compromise national security, and she has revealed that the only passage deleted from her manuscript concerned MI5's role in the failed attack by the Provisional IRA on Gibraltar in 1988. On that occasion three well-known Irish republican terrorists, under constant surveillance by MI5 watchers, were shot dead by SAS soldiers before they could detonate their bomb, but Rimington's account does not even acknowledge that MI5 played any role at all in the incident. Packed with mildly amusing anecdotes, usually barbed to take long-delayed swipe at some unfortunate contemporary. This is not a 'hit-and-tell', but more a catalogue of complaints about how her necessarily covert career affected her family, and how her impressive rise in a male-dominated environment supposedly was handicapped by glass ceilings. Her colleagues, unsurprisingly, are dismayed at her hypocrisy, having advised so many retirees to hold their tongues under threat of losing their pensions, and amazed at the number of grievances she has nurtured silently for so long. The impression is of a rather na ve, self-absorbed, competent, chippy bureaucrat who failed to find the confidence that others took for granted, and who appears to have been unable to exercise the power commonly associated with her status and her quite unique responsibility. Has Dame Stella acted 'To Defend the Realm', as MI5's motto requires? Certainly she has presented a remarkable account of her many frustrations, but she will have won no friends in so doing. Review by: Nigel West (Kirkus UK)

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