MI5 spooks and spies

British army officer Sir Vernon George Waldegrave Kell (1873-1942), who in 1909 became the first head of MI5, the new British intelligence unit then known as the Security Service Photograph: F. A. Swaine/Getty Images

Oswald Mosley his second wife, Diana. Mosley's British Union of Fascists were monitored by MI5. The couple were imprisoned in 1942 Photograph: Chris Ware/Getty Images

Eddie Chapman, a safe-blower who was serving a jail sentence in Jersey when the Germans invaded the Channel Islands. The Germans recruited him and parachuted him back into England where he immediately presented himself to MI5. He became an important double agent after being debriefed by the monocled Lt Col Robin ‘Tin Eye’ Stephens, who named him Agent Zigzag, a fabled agent and later become the subject of books and films Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images

The Garbo network based around second world war double agent Juan Pujol Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/PA

Former diplomat and Soviet spy Donald McLean Photograph: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis

Soviet spy Guy Burgess who defected with Donald MacLean in 1951 Photograph: /PA

Member of the 'Cambridge Five', Soviet spy Kim Philby Photograph: Jane Bown

Former royal art historian and knight of the realm, Anthony Blunt, exposed as a Soviet spy in 1979 Photograph: Jane Bown

David Shayler, the former MI5 officer prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act Photograph: Graeme Robertson

Former head of MI5 Dame Stella Rimington, the first woman to hold the top spymaster role Photograph: Graeme Robertson