[2] Milne was educated at St Paul's Girls' School and Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating with a first class degree.
[7] Milne had developed a strong affection for Scotland during the five years of her childhood spent there, and the establishment of the Scottish Parliament following the 1997 devolution referendum gave her an opportunity to return in 1999.
A return to her Magdalen College, Oxford followed in 2006 for her English DPhil on the change in the concept of Vanity Fair between John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and Thackeray's novel of 1847.
She was awarded a Research Fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford during the 2009–10 academic year,[1] and had gained a Leverhulme Scholarship.
[9] Her doctoral thesis was published as a book by Cambridge University Press in May 2015, At Vanity Fair: From Bunyan to Thackeray.