Eliza Manningham-Buller

Manningham-Buller worked as a teacher for three years at Queen's Gate School, Kensington, London from 1971 to 1974, having read English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, before joining the Security Service. She was recruited to the Security Service at a drinks party when someone suggested that she see someone at the Ministry of Defence. Specializing in counter-terrorism rather than MI5's then-classical counter-espionage, she was active at the time of the Lockerbie bombing by Libya in 1988. During the early 1980s she was reportedly one of only five people aware that Oleg Gordievsky, the deputy head of the KGB rezidentura at the Soviet embassy in London, was a double agent. She was one of the few people who knew that it was Gordievsky who had exposed Michael Bettaney.

She was a senior liaison officer working out of Washington, D.C. to the US intelligence community over the period of the first Gulf War, before leading the newly created Irish counter-terrorism section from 1992 when MI5 were given the lead responsibility for such work (from the Metropolitan Police). Having been promoted to the management board of the Security Service the next year, Manningham-Buller became the director in charge of surveillance and technical operations. She was appointed Deputy Director General in 1997, and succeeded Sir Stephen Lander as Director General in 2002, the second woman to take on the role after Dame Stella Rimington.

In the 2005 Birthday Honours, Manningham-Buller was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath (DCB). She resigned from MI5 on 21 April 2007, and was succeeded by her deputy, Jonathan Evans. She was raised to the peerage as Baroness Manningham-Buller, of Northampton in the County of Northamptonshire on 2 June 2008.

She reportedly joined the public speaking circuit. She was appointed to the Court and Council of Imperial College London in 2009, becoming deputy chairman later that year, and named chairman in July 2011. She became a governor of biomedical research charity the Wellcome Trust in 2008 and the first female chair of the Trust on 1 October 2015. She left the Wellcome Trust in 2021, being replaced as chair by Julia Gillard on 12 April 2021. From 2015 to 2025, she was co-president of Chatham House.

On St George's Day (23 April), 2014, Manningham-Buller was appointed a Lady Companion of the Order of the Garter (LG) by Queen Elizabeth II.

She became chair of the Conduct Committee on 19 January 2022. She took part in the Royal Procession at the Coronation of Charles III and Camilla, carrying St Edward's Staff.

Manningham-Buller was the second daughter in a family of four, born to Reginald Manningham-Buller, 1st Viscount Dilhorne, and his wife, the former Lady Mary Lindsay. Manningham-Buller's father, Lord Dilhorne (1905–1980), was a Conservative MP from 1943 to 1962. He was Britain's second highest legal officer, the Solicitor General, and then became Britain's highest legal officer, the Attorney General. He later held the office of Lord Chancellor for two years. He was created an hereditary peer with the title Viscount Dilhorne. Her mother, Lady Dilhorne, trained carrier pigeons that were used to fly coded messages in World War II. The pigeons were dropped in wicker baskets with little parachutes over France and Germany and they were used to fly back to her mother's pigeon loft carrying intelligence. One of the pigeons won the Dickin Medal, and one brought back intelligence of the V-2 rocket project in Peenemünde, Germany. Lady Dilhorne died in Oxfordshire on 25 March 2004, aged 93.

Manningham-Buller was educated at Northampton High School and Benenden School.

On 15 July 1991, she married David John Mallock and has five stepchildren by her husband's prior marriage. Her husband died in 2021.

Criticism of 42-day terrorism detention

On 8 July 2008, Manningham-Buller made her maiden speech in the House of Lords following her resignation. She told the House that she was against government plans to extend the time period for retaining terrorist suspects in the UK from 28 to 42 days. She told peers that she disagreed on a "practical basis as well as a principled one". She criticised the plans for terrorism detention as being not "in any way workable" and emphasised the need for all political parties to work together in finding a solution for dealing with terrorism. Furthermore, Manningham-Buller maintained that "complete security" could never be achieved in a country and that civil liberties were at risk of being compromised if the plans were passed by the House of Lords.

The four minute speech attracted praise from other Lords, including Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale, who described it as "outstanding, thoughtful and valuable", but also significant attention in the media, given the Baroness's expertise in counter-terrorism issues. Martin Kettle, writing in The Guardian on 11 July 2008, described it as "devastatingly succinct" and "the fatal shot" which would ensure that the Government's "plans were holed below the water line". James Kirkup of The Daily Telegraph described it as "a huge blow to Gordon Brown's plans to extend the detention of terrorist suspects to 42 days".

Other peers supported Manningham-Buller's stance against the plans, including former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer of Thoroton and former Chairperson of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) Lady Neville-Jones. Nevertheless, Lord West of Spithead, who was First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy until 2006 and was then a junior Home Office minister, spoke for the Government and implied that more stringent security measures were required to deal with the "unprecedented terrorist threat" to the UK.