Intel recruitment

Have you got what it takes to be a spy?

Historically, it's been a man's world. When the intelligence agencies were set up, in the early 20th Century, recruits came from the military.

And then, Prof Glees says, in World War 2, it was decided that the intelligence services needed to be intelligent. That was when tapping up the brightest students from universities began - and of course at that time it was mostly men.

But it's changed since then. A recent government report on the issue says that last year 41.6% of MI5's workforce was female, with a target of 45% by 2021.

Machon says that in her time there, in the early 1990s, it was 51% women and 49% men. She wonders whether the TV series Spooks, which ran from 2002 to 2011, may have deterred women from applying because it showed MI5 officers' work as so dangerous, much more so than the reality.