Hugh Bonneville reveals how he found out his mother worked at MI6

Bonneville found out about his mum’s secret job years after she retired - (PA Archive)

Hugh Bonneville has revealed that his late mother Patricia worked at secret intelligence service MI6.

The Downton Abbey star, 61, explained that he only found out about her espionage links years after her retirement.

Bonneville discovered her secret job after noticing that her office building near Waterloo was up for sale in a newspaper, with the detail “belonging to the intelligence services.”

“Mum and Dad had retired. And I opened the newspaper and there was a picture of Mum's office and it said ‘MI6 building to be sold’,” he said on the Rosebud podcast.

“I rang Mum, who I remember was in the garden - Dad had to get her. I said, ‘You worked at Century House? Well, that's MI6,’ to which she replied, ‘Yes dear.’”

The baffled actor told his mother, “You were a spy,” but she insisted: “No dear, I did filing.”

Bonneville pictured on Downton Abbey with co-star Michelle Dockery (Ben Blackall / © 2021 Focus Features, LLC)

“I was so bowled over this,” Bonneville recalled.

The Paddington star asked Patricia for more details on her job, but she only said: “Filing. I can't tell you anything else.”

“And she didn't. She never spoke of it,” Bonneville said.

Patricia died aged 85 in 2014.

At her funeral, Bonneville revealed he found out she had sacrificed a full-time job in London to raise him, saying, “I felt very moved.”

In 2022, Bonneville revealed his mother had been known as “the Colonel” in the area where his parents had retired because she was a “do-er.”

He told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs that he asked his father whether Patricia had ever discussed her work with him.

“He said, ‘Never – she just went to the office,’” Bonneville remembered.

Bonneville thought her work was likely to have been administrative, saying: “So all I know is she didn’t have special umbrellas or knives coming out of her toecaps or anything like that.”

“She did just work in the office but I’m extremely proud, not only that she found fulfillment in that work, as well as bringing up us kids, but that she never spoke about it,” he added.

Bonneville has been ostensibly single since splitting from his wife Lucinda Williams in October 2023.

They married in 1998 and have a son Felix.