It has been announced this morning that Daphne Park, Baroness Park of Monmouth has died, aged 88.
After a long career as a diplomat and an intelligence officer, she was ennobled in 1990 and sat as a Conservative peer.
Back in 2003, Rachel Sylvester wrote this wonderful profile of the woman she knew as "Daffers" when she was a student at Oxford in the late 1980s (where the future peer was a Pro-Vice Chancellor):
With her sensible shoes, her beady brown eyes and her Lady Bracknell voice, Baroness Park of Monmouth does not look the Queen of Spies. At 81, she bears a closer resemblance to Miss Marple than James Bond. She drinks black coffee - stirred, not shaken - instead of martinis, and, for most of her career, she drove a battered old 2CV rather than a customised Aston Martin.
But Daphne Park was the true face of British Intelligence for the second half of the 20th century. As one of MI6's most senior controllers for more than 30 years, she ran agents in Moscow during the Cold War, infiltrated Hanoi during the Vietnam conflict and smuggled men out of the Congo, post-independence, in the boot of her car. When she refers to "the office", she means MI6.
She remained an active peer until her death, making what was her final contribution in the chamber just last month, on the National Security Strategy.
Jonathan Isaby
