When her father got a job in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, the family moved to the Midlands, where Stella attended Nottingham High School for Girls.

She spent her last summer of secondary school working as an au pair in Paris, before enrolling at the University of Edinburgh in 1954 to study English.

[5] Completing her degree in 1958, Rimington studied archive administration at the University of Liverpool, before beginning work as an archivist at the County Record Office in Worcester in 1959.

Gaining her security clearance, Rimington worked in the MI5 office for nearly two years, until she and her husband returned to London in 1969, where she decided to apply for a permanent position at MI5.

In December 1991, she made a visit to Moscow to make the first friendly contact between the British intelligence services and their old enemies the KGB.

On 16 July 1993, MI5 (with the reluctant approval of the British Government) published a 36-page booklet titled The Security Service, which revealed publicly, for the first time, details of MI5's activities, operations and duties, as well as the identity and even photographs of Rimington as Director General.

[9] Her role in the service was considered a model for Dame Judi Dench's portrayal of M in the James Bond series starting in GoldenEye.

"[15] In remarks reported in 2009, Rimington expressed concerns that the Brown administration was not "recognizing that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism: that we live in fear and under a police state.

"[16] On 5 October 2009 the BBC broadcast a statement from Rimington who claimed that certain MI5 files collected by her predecessors had been destroyed, but without clarifying whether this took place during her appointment as Director General, or as part of her later involvement with the Archives Task Force.

[17] In 2009, Rimington received an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Social Science from Nottingham Trent University in recognition of her support for openness about the work of the secret service.