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

She held the DG position at MI5 from 1992-96 and was not only the first female DG of MI5 but the first whose name was publicised on appointment. Rimington retired from MI5 in 1996. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath (DCB) in the 1996 New Year Honours. Rimington’s work since then has been as 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, Liz Carlyle, was published. Her other novels are Secret Asset (2006), Illegal Action (2007), Dead Line (2008), Present Danger (2009), Rip Tide (2011), The Geneva Trap (2012) and Close Call (2014). She was chair of the judges for the 2011 Man Booker Prize. 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.