Bond and Fleming: Times Online's exclusive 100 year interactive timeline

A door opens, as if by magic, in a Pugin-papered wall. “Come through our secret entrance,” Baroness Park of Monmouth says, ushering us into the House of Lords dining room. Her friend, Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale, plonks a large handbag on the floor. “Earl Grey or English Breakfast?” she asks. “Toasted tea cakes or crumpets?”

The two peers look like innocent old ladies, but in fact they were two of the Cold War's most formidable spies. They drink tea, stirred not shaken, rather than Martinis, shaken not stirred, and they wouldn't be seen dead in an Aston Martin (Lady Park zooms around Parliament in a motorised wheelchair). And yet they were the true face of British Intelligence for much of the 20th century. When they refer to “the Office”, they mean MI6.

As one of the Secret Intelligence Service's most senior controllers for more than 30 years, Lady Park, 88, ran agents in Hanoi during the Vietnam War, smuggled defectors out of the Congo in the boot of her Citroën 2CV and was posted to Moscow when the KGB was at the height of its powers. Lady Ramsay, 72, was on the MI6 Iraq desk during the Gulf War and worked in Helsinki when Finland was an intelligence crossroads. She also helped to persuade Oleg Gordievsky, a colonel in the KGB, to defect.

In their view, it is no good conforming to stereotypes. “I always looked just like a fat missionary, which was very useful. Missionaries get around, you know,” Lady Park says. “James Bond is rather dated and macho.” Lady Ramsay adds: “John le Carré makes everything seem so sordid. It's all about treachery and we are not treacherous.”

The peers have quite a reputation in the Lords. As we talk, surrounded by former ministers and political grandees, Lord Puttnam, the film producer, rushes over and says: “If there's one conversation in this room I'd like to listen to, it's this one.” Later, Lord Alli, the media mogul, strolls over. He is brushed away while Lady Park finishes a story about an African general, a death threat and a brothel.

Unlike Baroness Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, Lady Park and Lady Ramsay are in favour of being able to hold terrorist suspects for 42 days without charge. They will defend the Government's anti-terrorism legislation when it reaches the Lords in the autumn.

“The nature of the threat has become far more complex,” Lady Park says. “One day something vital will turn up two days after somebody has been released at twenty-eight days and we will all regret it.” Lady Ramsay agrees: “The greatest human right is the right not to be blown up. These people don't want to achieve a political end, they want to destroy our way of life. The British judiciary are getting out of the box. They seem to feel they can pronounce on anything, but they should talk about what they know. It's arrogance. They are out of touch with ordinary people.”

Many peers disagree, but they will listen to the two women because of their experience. They tell amazing stories about burning top-secret documents and hiding the ash in their knickers, and about extracting information over brandy by a moonlit African river. They have hidden in telephone boxes and hitched lifts in light aircraft to deliver messages back to base. They risked their lives for their country in some of the most dangerous parts of the world. In Africa, Lady Park was beaten by a mutinous mob and then thrown into a black hole to be shot - but somehow she turned her captors around. During the Cold War, Lady Ramsay was chased down dark streets as she tried to woo informants over to her side. But they play down their bravery. “There are frightening moments and there are moments when you should have been frightened but you weren't,” Lady Park says.

Like 007, they were licensed to kill, but they would never have dreamt of carrying a gun. “Obviously if your back was to the wall you would have done what was necessary,” Lady Ramsay says. “But we weren't like Rosa Klebb, we didn't have special shoes with poisoned daggers.” Her own firearms training was not a success. “The instructor told me, ‘You're not supposed to close your eyes every time you pull the trigger'.”

Lady Park kept her gun in the safe. “In the Congo, I frightened an unwanted visitor away by pretending I was a witch. I shouted out of the window, ‘If you do not go away, your feet will fall off'. That was far more effective than a gun.”

They survived on their wits rather than their weapons. Lady Ramsay explains: “When I was working under cover, I always carried in the back of my mind a story about having an affair with a married politician. If I met somebody who knew me, that would explain why I was in the hotel under an alias. As long as you tell something that's vaguely disreputable, people tend to believe it.”

Women, they think, make far better spies than men. “You can't pass money in brown envelopes to an agent in a men's loo, of course. You have to meet them in a cocktail bar,” Lady Ramsay says. “When you are cultivating someone, they are much more likely to accept an invitation to come and have lunch with you than some boring, suited man.”

It is partly because women are better at talking that gives them the edge, Lady Park says. “I once had an excellent male officer who was running an agent in a very dangerous situation. He said to me, ‘He wants to rabbit on about his mortgage and his wife the whole time but we want information'. I told him to take him out for a long dinner and let him talk as much as he likes. That's how women think and men don't.”

Although both experienced a degree of sexism in their profession, Lady Park says that discrimination sometimes worked to her advantage. “I would travel all over Russia on the trains with a male security guard. The little men from the KGB would assume he was the important one and watch him. I could get up to all sorts of things.” Lady Ramsay adds: “If you're doing something peculiar in a car, which you quite often have to when you are delivering things, people just think ‘woman driver'.”

The SIS technical department (the real-life Q) was, however, hopeless at making undercover equipment for female spies. “There would be handbags with cameras inside ... but they had all been designed by men,” Lady Ramsay says. “I used to say to them, ‘Nobody would be seen dead with a handbag like that.'”

Lady Park never played on her sexuality. “Do I look like Mata Hari?” she asks. “I used to say to people, ‘I will never do anything that is against the interests of my country and I don't expect you to do anything against the interests of your country, but our interests are the same on the following things...' I never had a refusal.”

Feminine charm, Lady Ramsay says, only goes so far. “There's a dangerous line. You have to extricate yourself before they make a pass or they lose face. And you have to make sure the wife knows you're not after their man. You make friends with the wives and the mistresses and the secretaries.”

Spying, they say, is all about trust. “You have to build up special relationships,” Lady Park says. “I once rescued somebody from death and later on he became the head of their local intelligence service. That was very valuable. I got more from him than anyone else.” Lady Ramsay agrees. “The better the personal chemistry, the more you are going to get - it's very old-fashioned really.”

Relationships matter more, in their view, than technical expertise, whether dealing with the KGB or al-Qaeda. “We can be as brilliant as anything with all our machines and intercepts and technical things, but at the end of the day human beings still matter,” Lady Ramsay says. “There are certain things that only people can tell you.” There are, they think, similarities between Islamism and Communism. It's an ideology with which people can become disillusioned.”

As they talk about how they would love to go to Iraq and how fascinated they are by Afghanistan, it sounds as if they have never really retired. “I'll always be available,” Lady Ramsay says. “Vladimir Putin says there's no such thing as a former KGB officer and it's rather the same with a British spy.”

The quickfire quiz

Shaken or stirred? Earl Grey, stirred

Aston Martin or 2CV? 2CV

Mata Hari or Modesty Blaise? Modesty Blaise

John le Carré or John Buchan? John Buchan

Black tie or black tights? Black tights

Phone box or mobile phone? Phone box

The CVs

Baroness Park of Monmouth

Age 88

Education Grew up in Africa, right. At the age of 11 she walked for three days to the nearest road, hitched a lift to the coast and took a boat to England to go to Rosa Bassett School, Streatham. Read modern languages at Somerville College, Oxford, and Russian at Newnham College, Cambridge

Career WTS (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry), 1943-47; Foreign Office, 1948-79, including postings in Moscow, Leopoldville, Lusaka, Hanoi and Ulan Bator. Principal of Somerville College, Oxford, 1980-89. A Conservative peer

Family Single

Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale

Age 72

Education Hutchesons' Girls' Grammar School, Glasgow University, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva

Career Diplomatic Service, 1969-91, including in Stockholm and Helsinki. Foreign policy adviser to John Smith, 1992-94. Intelligence and Security Committee, 2005-07. A Labour peer

Family Single

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