Whitehall speaks out

The women behind Britain’s counter-terrorism struggle have revealed how they battle gender stereotypes in an interview and photo shoot for a cover story, above, for Vogue magazine. The Foreign Office officials are involved in roles as varied and demanding as kidnap negotiation, protecting the nation’s transport infrastructure and monitoring extremists abroad. Yet in an unprecedented interview they describe how, despite their expertise, they are routinely looked down on by foreign dignitaries and occasionally mistaken for being a PA. Jane Marriott,

left, former acting ambassador to Iran, now director of the Joint International Counterterrorism Unit, said: “The model when I joined was that it was either a childless single woman, or a woman who parked her family and got on with it.”