ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the development of MKDC’s closing media narrative in the final years of its administration of Milton Keynes. Drawing on the slow emergence of a more assertive, combative tone which acknowledged the town’s media representations, this media narrative focused on presenting Milton Keynes as a success in spite of, or because of having overcome, the negative preconceptions and representations which circulated about the town more broadly. This idea of Milton Keynes as an “embattled success” necessarily presumed negativity as a starting point, but sought to disprove it by emphasising the way in which the town’s realities transcended this. The broader political context of ongoing antipathy to postwar new towns helps account for the need for such an approach, however it also helped to perpetuate the idea of the town’s essential value, and the need to read it as separate from the political and cultural context which created it. This has had ongoing legacies for how the town has been understood historically.
