Woman who provided the inspiration for Miss Moneypenny dies aged 88

The secret service secretary who inspired the character of Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond stories has died aged 88, reports The Times.

Dame Victoire “Paddy” Ridsdale once described Ian Fleming as “definitely James Bond in his mind”. Dame Paddy was definitely Miss Moneypenny — or at least a part of her.

Fleming and Dame Paddy, then plain Paddy Bennett, were colleagues in the wartime Naval Intelligence Department: he was assistant to the Chief of Naval Intelligence; she was a secretary, and a most formidable one, with at least some of the characteristics associated with Fleming’s second-most beloved creation.

Dame Paddy did nothing to dampen speculation that she had been a model for Moneypenny, although there are other contenders.

In the books, Miss Moneypenny, M’s secretary, smoulders with unrequited love for 007. In Thunderball, we learn that she “often dreamed hopelessly about Bond”. Dame Paddy was a friend but denied harbouring amorous feelings for Fleming. She insisted that she was “never taken in by his charm”. “He’d go off and do something brave and come back with silk stockings and lipsticks for me,” she told People magazine in 1998. “I always kept him at arm’s length.”

Another possible inspiration for the Moneypenny character was Kathleen Pettigrew, personal assistant to Stewart Menzies, the head of MI6, known as C. Anyone attempting to gain access to C had to get past Miss Pettigrew, who was described by one colleague as a “formidable, grey-haired lady with the square jaw of the battleship type”.

A third contender is Vera Atkins, executive officer with the French section of the Special Operations Executive set up by Churchill to “set Europe ablaze” with clandestine operations behind enemy lines. Fleming knew Atkins, who trained and handled more than 400 agents, through his intelligence work.

Another possible inspiration is Margaret Priestley, who helped to run 30 Commando Assault Unit, an intelligence commando squad set up by Fleming which he referred to as his “Red Indians”.

The name Moneypenny came from an unfinished novel by Peter Fleming, Ian’s brother, entitled The Sett. The elder Fleming gave up after 30,000 words, and his brother simply appropriated the name.

Miss Moneypenny became a staple of the Bond films but in the novels she is a fleeting figure: a non-smoking, milk-drinking poodle-owner, who “would have been desirable but for eyes which were cool and direct and quizzical”.

In the novels, Bond has his own secretary, Loelia Ponsonby, “tall and dark, with a reserved unbroken beauty” but also “a cool air of authority that might easily become spinsterish”. The real Loelia Ponsonby was a friend of Fleming’s, who later became Duchess of Westminster.

In reality, the Naval Intelligence Department contained a number of extremely attractive women. The head of Naval Intelligence, Admiral John Godfrey, who was the model for M, deliberately recruited attractive women in the peculiar belief that they were less likely to want to impress men, and therefore less likely to spill intelligence secrets.

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