Robert C. Milsom
7th August 1941 - 13th January 2022
He radiated goodness and his focus was on the other. Robert Milsom, whose death occurred early in 2022 after a long struggle with Parkinson’s Disease, worked as a Cambridge solicitor whose clients were largely those whose cases most needed defence and who might otherwise not have been taken up with so much energy and devotion. He was passionately connected to the ‘underdog’ and was loved and respected by those whom he defended. In illustration of this, he was in later years accosted in Mill Road by grateful clients as he negotiated, with difficulty, a short walk. Having qualified in mid-life for his second career as a solicitor, he retired from Shelley and Co in 2013.
Robert joined Queens’ College as a scholar in 1959, read law initially and then changed to reading history. He participated vigorously in college life, becoming President of the St Bernard Society (the college debating club), and was also active in wider University politics. Between 1961 and 1962, for example, he worked as Secretary of the University Labour Club. A passionate believer in human equality, he also participated effectively in moves to create gender equality in the then male-dominated Cambridge Union. His idealistic beliefs also took him to participate in numerous CND demonstrations and in 1961 he was among those in a committee of 100 to protest at RAF Weathersfield.
Robert’s initial career was as a teacher. He took a post-graduate qualification at Cambridge and worked in London in the Education Department of the TUC.
In 1973, he moved to Birmingham where he taught history at Fircroft College, a Quaker oriented residential adult institution. Here, he promoted a more student-centred curriculum, and was among the almost entire faculty eventually to be dismissed for their active demands for a more inclusive curriculum.
This was when Robert returned to Cambridge, took a law conversion degree by correspondence, and worked for several law firms in the city. Robert never lost his interest in and knowledge of, in particular, the radical politics of the 17th century. His most particular focus was on Oliver Cromwell and he taught a course on Cromwell at the University of the Third Age. He never lost touch with Queens’ College: in 2019 making a donation to the General Purposes Fund.
In 1964, he married Penny Kaldor. Together they had three sons, Tom, Paul and Ben. Paul pre-deceased him in December 2021. Robert is much missed by his family and his wide circle of friends to whom he gave loyal, valued, and supportive help. This was an idealistic life, well-lived and much loved.
Tom Lowenstein
March 2022
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