Milicent Bagot was the paternal great-great-granddaughter of William Bagot, 1st Baron Bagot, 6th Baronet and the maternal granddaughter of Jesse Garratt, of Wateringbury, Kent.
12 Facts About Milicent Bagot
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Milicent Bagot was educated at Putney High School and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she took a Class IV in Classical Moderations in 1927.
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Milicent Bagot began work as a temporary registry clerk with the Metropolitan Police Special Branch in 1929, at the age of 22.
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Milicent Bagot entered the Ministry of Defence from Scotland Yard as a secretary in 1931, when her section was transferred to MI5.
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Milicent Bagot went on to work for both MI5 and MI6.
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Milicent Bagot was the first person to warn MI5 that Kim Philby, MI6 officer and Soviet KGB double agent, had been a member of the Communist party.
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Milicent Bagot wrote a definitive account of the 1924 Zinoviev Affair in which a forged letter purported to be from Grigory Zinoviev, president of the executive committee of the Comintern, urged the British working class to rise up in an armed insurrection.
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Milicent Bagot later spent time in the Middle East advising on how to counter Soviet subversion to British authorities in the area.
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Milicent Bagot's knowledge was supposed to have impressed J Edgar Hoover.
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In 1953 Milicent Bagot became the first female intelligence officer in MI5 to reach the rank of Assistant Director, taking charge of an Overseas Branch section.
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Milicent Bagot was made an MBE in 1949 and promoted to CBE in 1967.
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Milicent Bagot lived in Putney for most of her life.