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The UK’s overseas espionage agency will be led by a woman for the first time since its inception 116 years ago.

Blaise Metreweli has been appointed the new head of the Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, 30 years after Judi Dench played a fictional female MI6 chief in the James Bond films. Metreweli, currently head of technology, a position codenamed “Q”, will take over from Richard Moore as the 18th chief – or “C” – when he steps down in the autumn after a five-year term. “C” was known as “M” in Ian Fleming’s Bond novels and the films.

Keir Starmer, who interviewed the final two candidates, revealed the 47-year-old Metreweli as the new C: the only member of MI6 staff who is ever publicly named. “The historic appointment of Blaise Metreweli comes at a time when the work of our intelligence services has never been more vital,” the prime minister said in a statement.

Who is Blaise Metreweli?

Metreweli, a Cambridge graduate with a 26-year career in intelligence, has been “the internal frontrunner for several years and has been groomed for the top job”, said The Times. Colleagues describe her as “astute, intelligent with a streak of toughness”.

In her time as the first female Q – one of four director-generals in MI6 – she has “championed under-represented groups”, particularly neurodiverse people. She is said to be “very interested in artificial intelligence and its potential role in espionage”.

According to the “brief biographical details given in the announcement”, said The Guardian, Metreweli studied social anthropology and initially applied to work as a diplomat, before joining MI6 in 1999. She has spent much of her career in operational roles in the Middle East and Europe.

In a 2022 interview with the Financial Times, in which she was quoted under the pseudonym Ada, Metreweli said that being a spy was the only job she’d ever wanted. As a child, she learned a cipher system called pigpen code and used it with her friends to leave notes under flower pots.

A self-confessed “geek”, she said that her first job in counter-proliferation gave her the chance to engage with the “really deep science” of nuclear technology, and form “incredibly close relationships” with overseas agents who “were risking their lives to be able to share secrets with us”.

“Tall and athletic with cropped blonde hair”, Metreweli has “a penchant for large glittering brooches in the shape of insects”, said the paper. These “tend to draw anxious looks from industry contacts who suspect a camera or microphone hidden within”.

MI6: the ‘odd exception’

Metreweli is of Eastern European heritage, but is said to be an excellent Arabic speaker. Her expertise regarding the Middle East will be “particularly relevant given the current conflict between Israel and Iran“, said the Financial Times yesterday. But “one of her main challenges” will be managing the agency’s “changing relations” with the CIA, amid “diverging security interests” under Donald Trump.

She might find common ground with Gina Haspel, who was appointed the CIA‘s first female director in 2018.

The “historical paucity of female representation” in senior MI6 roles has also improved; three of the four current director-generals below Moore are women: Metreweli, the head of operations and the head of strategy. But Margaret “Meta” Ramsay, who worked as an intelligence officer until her retirement in the 1990s, said that MI6 was “beginning to be an odd exception among national intelligence agencies” for never having been led by a woman.

MI5, the UK‘s domestic intelligence agency, has had two female director-generals: Stella Rimington, from 1992 to 1996, and Eliza Manningham-Buller. Metreweli has also worked as a director at MI5, according to Sky News. Of the other main spy agencies, GCHQ is also under the command of a woman for the first time; Anne Keast-Butler took on the role in 2023.

Metreweli said she was “proud and honoured” to be appointed C, and looked forward to continuing her work “alongside the brave officers and agents of MI6 and our many international partners”.