Was there a real Miss Moneypenny?

Hubbard-Hall, Claire.  Secret Servants of the Crown: The Forgotten Women of British 

          Intelligence.  New York: Citadel Press, 2025.  ISBN: 9780806543710

 You know the scene from the James Bond movies - Bond enters or leaves M's office and interacts with Miss Moneypenny.  But was Miss Moneypenny based on a real person?  That is what Secret Servants of the Crown seeks to answer along with a number of other questions regarding the role of women in MI5 and MI6 during World War I and II.

 

Hubbard-Hall opens the book with Kathleen Pettigrew who was most likely the inspiration for Miss Moneypenny.  She was the secretary for three heads of MI6 before she retired in 1958.  She had witnessed the apprehension of Mata Hari during World War I, World War II, and the unmasking of Kim Philby.  

Hubbard-Hall then spends several chapters dealing with the roles played by women during World Wat I and the birth of MI5 and MI6 as separate entities.  There were the Lunn Sisters who spied for England in Russia and then one spied for Russia in England after the war.  Then there was the case of Olga Gray who went undercover to prevent Soviet agents from obtaining plans for a top secret weapon.  During World War II, women served in both MI5 and MI6 in England and overseas.  They were part of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) with various female agents dying during operations in occupied territories.  Then there were Rita Winsor and Ena Molesworth who traveled from Geneva across France during the German invasion to the Spanish border and then on to their new post in Lisbon.  After the war the pair set up a travel agency - International Services -  that would take high-end tourists to a variety of countries especially Soviet Union, and China.  Besides the exploits of individual members of MI5 and MI6, Hubbard-Hall outlines the behind-the-scenes work played by many in running the various indexing systems crucial to the organizations, the code-braking and the training of agents.  

So if the reader is interested in a behinds the screen look at British intelligence during the first half of the Twentieth Century, he or she should pick up Secret Servants of the Crown and find out what was actually happening!