Emma Peel (Excerpts from “Emma Peel - feminist icon” by Elizabeth Eggleston)

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In 1964, the producers of a successful British television show discovered a young actress from the Royal Shakespeare Company. She had not been the first choice for the part but luckily her abilities as an actress shone through and she was presented to the public as a ready-made fashion icon and a truly modern woman in her time. The program itself had been very successful, but the heights it reached with her surpassed anything else British television could offer. It became the first British show bought by the American market and was the first worldwide successful British export.

The program was "The Avengers" and the actress was Diana Rigg. She was only with the program from 1964-67 and was a mere one out of six actors who assisted the long standing Patrick Macnee, yet the Emma Peel era on the show was defining and arguably the most popular. In the forty years since, the character Emma Peel has become a byword for feminism, fashion and fetishism and was recently voted as one of the Top 100 Television Characters of all time and the number one television sex-bomb by Channel Four, UK.