Life Stories
Michael Burns
Michael Lowrie Burns (1976 BA Philosophy, Politics and Economy) died on 2 February 2025 aged 87.
Michael (Mike) Burns was a mature undergraduate PPE student at Keble between 1976 and 1979, after completing a social science diploma at Ruskin College, in 1976. His association with Keble both preceded and succeeded his undergraduate years, as he was a cricketer of great ability and came to the keen attention of two famous 1970s cricketing Keble dons, Paul Hayes and Roy Harris. Both Paul (one of Mike’s PPE tutors) and Roy were grateful to rely on Mike’s prowess, honed, as it had been, in Surrey League cricket with Malden Wanderers CC, in the many summer matches that they orchestrated in and around Oxford. Alongside these appearances, Mike represented Keble with great distinction during the years in which he was eligible to do so. Although (and perhaps because) he was 15-20 years older than fellow undergraduate cricketers, Mike was absolutely at the heart of Keble cricket life during the latter years of the 1970s. The Keble Cricketing ‘Vagabonds’, developed, with Roy and Paul’s support, a fixture list of midweek and out of term time matches against village and club sides across Oxfordshire and beyond and toured across the South West, playing schools, armed services and elite club sides, with significant success. The ‘Old Vagabonds’ (by now, Keble Alumni) continued to play and tour well into the 1980s – and still, technically, boast Imran Khan, another Keble cricketer ‘acquired via Paul Hayes’, as their Club President!
Mike’s life story, beyond cricket, is a fine example of the social mobility, enabled in post WW2 Britain, by the widening of participation in further and higher education, turbo-charged by the 1944 Education Act. Mike’s father, Philip, was in the wholesale fish business and his mother, Iris, worked as a sales assistant. Mike’s success at 11+ enabled him to get a free place at Raynes Park County Grammar School. He left and took a paint-spraying job, a briefly held office job in a stockbroker’s and then became a trainee cameraman for ATV, in Elstree. 1962-1974 saw him develop considerable camera and related television skills – with ABC Weekend and Thames TV. He worked on The Avengers, Armchair Theatre, Opportunity Knocks and The Sooty Show – all, in their different ways, iconic British TV shows.
All the while, as well as marrying, Mary (nee Miller) and becoming a father (to James and Sally, later to John and Mark), Mike played, coached and championed cricket and sport more widely. When he succeeded, after some struggle, to persuade Kingston Borough Council to give him a discretionary grant for a two-year diploma at Ruskin College, a major change of direction was enacted. After Ruskin, his academic and sporting talents flourished at Keble and after Keble he continued his academic career in a longstanding tutorial role with Ruskin College. Through this connection, he remained a fixture in cricket in and around Oxford, as well as thriving in captaincy and coaching roles with Malden Wanderers CC and then with Surrey County CC Youth cricket. He specialised, by now in the decades from the 80s onwards, in filmmaking and writing books and articles relating to sport. The history of the FA Cup, histories of Surrey CCC and Yorkshire CCC, reviews of English Test tours of the 1950s – all these and more were lovingly and creatively edited and curated into film. He wrote and published with equal success to the films that he made.
A better testimony to the creative and cultural powers unleashed by widening participation in education beyond the basic would be hard to find. Mike mentored primary school children, read and researched Dickens and many other writers (he became an expert on 19th century cricketing references in the great British novels) and found the time to run the New York and London marathons and act as agent for a Labour candidate in his home constituency.
Above all, Mike was a wonderful husband to Mary, and family father to four. His fellow Old Keble Vagabonds have worked, with the College, to honour his memory and legacy with funds raised to provide the current Keble cricketers with a new set of sightscreens. To we ‘Old Keble Vagbonds’, Mike was an abidingly loyal friend and teammate, a wise and sympathetic mentor and an epitome of the inclusive and progressive approach to education and sport for which Keble is praised.
Kindly provided by friend and contemporary David Smith (1972 BA English)