College Record 2013

Kirsty Milne
(1964–2013)
Kirsty Milne, who has died aged 49, was a highly regarded political journalist and
academic who grew up near Glasgow and then London, after her parents moved
there in 1973. Her father, Alasdair Milne, became Director General of the BBC, and
was renowned for the battles he fought to preserve that institution’s independence
from government in the 1980s, something of which she was quietly proud.
Her career in political journalism began at the BBC and the New Statesman, but
after the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 she moved to the Sunday
Herald and then The Scotsman. As a journalist, she brought her forensic analytical
ability to bear on political subjects. Her columns were incisive, seeking the real
issues behind political flannel and the motivations behind politicians’ masks. Writing
with verve, she challenged the assumptions that all too often go unremarked in
politics. She had hoped that devolution would re-invigorate political debate, but
grew frustrated as partisan political point-scoring re-asserted itself as the defining
characteristic of Scottish politics. It prompted her to seek new horizons and become
an academic, although she retained an interest in the constitutional debate.
She had excelled as a student at Magdalen College, Oxford, where she was awarded
a First in English, so it is not surprising that her return to academic life was a
success. She was initially Neiman Fellow in journalism at Harvard, and became a
Fellow of the Centre for European Studies, where she wrote an influential pamphlet
for DEMOS asserting the new role of the media in manufacturing single-issue
dissent as public disengagement from party politics grew. She returned to London
and gained an MA in intellectual and cultural history at Queen Mary College,
London. Then back to Oxford and Magdalen College in 2006, where she began a
DPhil.
She was a non-smoker, but she was then diagnosed with lung cancer. Despite this,
she not only completed her thesis – on the evolution of the phrase ‘Vanity Fair’
from Bunyan to Thackeray – but also agreed a publishing deal for it. By now she
was well established in her second career: she loved teaching at Oxford, and her
academic ability was recognised with the award of a Leverhulme Scholarship.
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