The real Miss Moneypennys: the secret history of Britain's female spies

Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. From cleaners to codebreakers, women's contributions to the history of British intelligence have often gone unrecognized and forgotten. But in actuality, they penetrated enemy networks, executed astonishing operations, and organised a labyrinth of classified documents. Claire Hubbard Hall is the author of Her Secret Service, and speaking to Rachel Dinning, she delves into the untold stories of women in British intelligence.

So Claire, welcome to the History Extra podcast. Your book, Her Secret Service, brings to light the crucial yet often overlooked roles women played in British intelligence services throughout the 20th century. And my first question to you today is: how did you approach writing a historical book about a topic that is in some ways secret. Some of the individuals in it were bound by the Official Secrets Act.

They never talked about it. That must surely have been a challenge. It definitely was the biggest challenge that I have probably have faced in terms of researching and writing intelligence history because when you look at the official records of the intelligence services, MI5, MI6, uh Government Code and Cipher School, which becomes later GCHQ, and then the wartime intelligence services. When you look at the official records, of course, the people who are making the decisions are men.

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