The Winner of the Polly Corrigan Book Prize 2025
The Polly Corrigan Book Prize committee is delighted to announce that the winner of the Prize for 2025 is:
Hall-Hubbard, Claire. Her Secret Service: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2024. https://www.weidenfeldandnicolson.co.uk/titles/claire-hubbard-hall/her-secret-service/9781399603430/.
Hall-Hubbard, Claire. Her Secret Service: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence.
Since the inception of the Secret Service Bureau back in 1909, women have worked at the very heart of British secret intelligence – yet their contributions have been all but written out of history.
From encoding orders and decrypting enemy messages to penning propaganda and infiltrating organisations, the women of British intelligence played a pivotal role in both the First and Second World Wars. These true custodians of Britain’s military secrets include Kathleen Pettigrew, personal assistant to the Chief of MI6 Stewart Menzies, who late in life declared ‘I was Miss Moneypenny, but with more power’, to Jane Archer, the very first female MI5 officer who raised suspicions about the Soviet spy Kim Philby long before he was officially unmasked and Winifred Spink, the first female officer ever sent to Russia in 1916.
Dr Polly Corrigan is a former journalist and teaching assistant at King’s College London, whose research focused on the Great Terror in the 1930s Soviet Union.