When Vernon Kell co-founded MI6’s precursor in 1909, he identified as his ideal recruits men “who could make notes on their shirt cuff while riding on horseback”. In the past, women have been overlooked, relegated to secretarial roles or, before the SIS era, deployed as “honeytraps” to ensnare or blackmail enemies. The low profile of these three senior officers is in keeping with the history of women in British intelligence. These photographs do not contain individuals working in British intelligence or document MI6 equipment and locations. For this issue, FT Weekend Magazine invited her to visualise scenes that reflect aspects of this article. They agreed to speak to encourage women applicants and correct the perception of espionage as a man’s game.Ībout the photographs: Eliza Bourner is a London-based photographer whose work creates richly cinematic psychological landscapes. I have agreed to change their names and omit certain details to protect them and the sources they work with. Since the chief of MI6 is the only member of the agency who is named or permitted to speak in public, and because all of them have been men, this is the first time that female SIS officers have ever spoken on the record. I have spent six months interviewing them about how they reached the top in a traditionally male career and trying to understand what the life of a female spy is really like. The most storied MI6 job of all belongs to Ada, who is the head of technology, known as “Q” after James Bond’s mastermind gadgeteer.

Rebecca is the chief’s deputy, who oversees strategy. They work in the most important and rapidly evolving areas of spycraft. For the first time, three of them are women. Kathy is one of four directors-general at SIS, each of whom reports to the chief, known as “C”. But she is one of the most powerful spies in Britain. “My dad just said, ‘Go for it.’” This self-effacing northerner says she is “not particularly brave”. She jokes that when she was first offered a job at the agency, also known as MI6, her mother questioned whether she wanted to commit herself to something so “wacky and unfamiliar”.

How to be a spy agent