Sir Alex Younger obituary: The former head of MI6 known by codename 'C'
Sir Alex Younger, who has died at 62 after being treated for cancer, was the longest-serving head of MI6 in half a century.
He led the Secret Intelligence Service between 2014 and 2020, his contract having been extended to maintain stability through the Brexit negotiations.
He joined the SIS in 1991 and oversaw its work on counter-terrorism in the run-up to the London Olympics.
Previously, he had been posted in Europe and the Middle East, serving as a senior MI6 officer in Afghanistan.
Known by the traditional codename ‘C’, Sir Alex was recruited at the same time as Richard Tomlinson, who in his book The Big Breach, portrayed him as ‘Spencer’, a St Andrews graduate and former Scots Guardsman.
He was named in a leaked list of 160 MI6 agents originally believed to have been released by Tomlinson, an allegation later disproved.
Alexander William Younger bore some semblance to Spencer.
He was born in Westminster in July 1963 to Scottish parents Nicholas and Mary (née Edge) and was educated at Marlborough College before graduating from St Andrews with a degree in economics and computer science.
He was sponsored through university by the Army, which trained him at Sandhurst and commissioned him into the Scots Guards where he achieved the rank of Lieutenant.
In his time at MI6 he attempted to demystify a service known largely to the public only through spy fiction.
In a letter to The Economist in 2017 he partially explained his rationale.
“We break the rules, certainly; we do not break the law,” he wrote.
“But it is certainly true that a country’s intelligence service can offer an unvarnished reflection of the values of the country it serves.
"The Stasi told you all you needed to know about the East German regime. The Secret Intelligence Service and our sister services, GCHQ and MI5, tell you a lot about modern Britain.”
In a 2024 interview with ITN he was somewhat more candid, confessing to being depressed at seeing Britain become “irrelevant” since Brexit.
He married Sarah Hopkins, an arts administrator, in 1993 and she survives him with two of their three children. Another son died in a car accident in 2019.