Dame Victoire Evelyn Patricia Ridsdale, Lady Ridsdale, DBE (née Bennett; 11 October 1921 – 16 December 2009), known as Dame Paddy Ridsdale, was a British secretary and intelligence operative. She was author

Ian Fleming Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer who is best known for his postwar ''James Bond'' series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., a ...

's secretary during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

and was the model for the character

Miss Moneypenny Miss Moneypenny, later assigned the first names of Eve or Jane, is a fictional character in the James Bond novels and films. She is secretary to M (James Bond), M, who is Bond's superior officer and head of the British Secret Intelligence Serv ...

, being M.'s loyal, long-suffering secretary, who is smitten with

James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...

Career

She was the wife of Sir

Julian Ridsdale Sir Julian Errington Ridsdale (8 June 1915 – 21 July 2004) was a British National Liberal and later Conservative politician and long-serving Member of Parliament (MP) for Harwich. He took a particular interest in Japan. The son of a stockb ...

. She served as an intelligence operative during

. It was later disclosed that she had assisted Fleming's counter-intelligence efforts during World War II. She was responsible for helping deceive the Axis by creating a fictitious identity for a body that had turned up drowned in

Operation Mincemeat Operation Mincemeat was a successful British deception operation of the Second World War to disguise the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily. Two members of British intelligence obtained the body of Glyndwr Michael, a tramp who died from eating r ...

. The body was "disguise as that of a naval officer, complete with totally convincing "secret" papers showing a different plan of attack ... e body, appearing to be a casualty from a shot-down plane, would then be floated ashore in Spain, where local German spies would find it ... Fleming's task was to make the body totally convincing. The book covers the minute attention paid to detail, which included placing theatre tickets and love letters in 'Major Martin's' pockets Paddy Bennett is one of two probable authors of those love letters.

Personal life

She was chairwoman of the Conservative MPs' Wives club for which she was appointed a DBE in 1991, ten years after her husband's

knighthood A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the Gr ...

. She survived her husband, who died in 2004; they had been married since 1942 and had one daughter, Penny.

Death

Ridsdale died in 2009, aged 88.Paddy Ridsdale obituary
telegraph.co.uk; accessed 2 June 2016.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ridsdale, Paddy 1921 births 2009 deaths Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire British women in World War II Place of birth missing Place of death missing World War II spies for the United Kingdom Wives of knights