The other DrC and I watched the PBS series Mrs. Wilson over the last two nights. If you get the chance to watch it, you'll find a fascinating true (sort of) story of a couple who meet and marry while working for MI 6 during WW II.
What I want to talk about is a recurring character in various British stories of wartime espionage. It is the typically hardbitten, unsentimental older woman who runs spies for the Brits. There is one such in the Wilson story, named Coleman, played by Fiona Shaw (Harry Potter's film aunt).
There was another in the PBS Foyle's War series, a woman running young women into occupied France for the Jedburgh program, in support of the Resistance. And I believe there was one portrayed in the original PBS Bletchley Circle series. If memory serves, there was another, sort of, in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Judi Dench as M in several Bond films almost fits the mold.
My question is this: what is this British fascination with tough older women running spies? I'm only familiar with the espionage fiction of the U.S. and Britain, do these archetypal spy-running ladies show up in the same sort of literature elsewhere, say in French, German or Japanese?
I can only think of one example in American spy fiction, Annie's boss Joan Campbell in Covert Affairs. Maybe the recurring, but mostly off-screen and minor, Mary Pat Foley character in Tom Clancy's fiction might qualify too. Truly, it seems to be mostly a Brit obsession.
Later ... It turns out a Vera Atkins may have been the actual person upon whom these characters were based, check out her Wikipedia bio.
