Milicent Bagot

Milicent Jessie Eleanor Bagot, CBE (28 March 1907 – 26 May 2006) was a British intelligence officer. She was the first woman to become an Assistant Director of MI5. Throughout her entire career for the British Empire, her job was to hunt down Soviet spies hidden within British and American intelligence. She was the purported model for the character Connie Sachs, the eccentric Sovietology expert who appeared in John le Carré's novels Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People, and the character of Muriel Edge in two of the 'Troy' novels by John Lawton – Black Out and Old Flames.

Early life and education Milicent Jessie Eleanor Bagot was born at 68 York Mansions in Battersea on 28 March 1907 to Ethel (née Garratt) (d. 1944) and Cecil Villiers Bagot, MA (1865–1940), a London solicitor.

Bagot was educated at Putney High School and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (MA),

Career

Career at Special Branch In 1929, at the age of 22, Bagot joined the Metropolitan Police Special Branch as a temporary registry clerk. This was her first exposure to the work of collating sensitive information and compiling a complete evidentiary picture.

Under Liddell's direction, Bagot focused on intelligence concerning the Communist International (Comintern).

Additionally, when Klaus Fuchs was being vetted to join the top-secret Manhattan Project, Bagot was the only person to raise an objection, but her concerns were overruled.

A blue plaque was unveiled on 15 October 2021 at Milicent Bagot's former home in Putney, which was unveiled by the Putney High School Headmistress, Suzie Longstaff.