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GAZETTEBenazir Bhutto(1976, Foreign Service Programme)Denis Cosgrove(1966, Geography)It was with deep sadness that the Collegeannounced the death of Benazir Bhutto, theformer Prime Minister of Pakistan, who waskilled in a suicide bombing in Rawalpindion 27 December 2007. In 1973, aftercompleting a BA in Comparative Governmentat Harvard, Benazir Bhutto came to Oxford,to Lady Margaret Hall, to read PPE. Herassociation with St Catherine’s College beganin 1976 when she matriculated as a graduatestudent on the Foreign Service Course – ayear-long programme for foreign diplomats,run from Queen Elizabeth House. Her yearat Catz was an extraordinarily busy one asduring this time Benazir was also Presidentof the Oxford Union.After leaving Oxford, Benazir returned toPakistan where she spent several years injail and under house arrest following theexecution of her father, who had beenPrime Minister of Pakistan during her timeat Oxford. In 1984, she returned to Englandfor medical treatment and, while in London,established an office of the Pakistan People’sParty and prepared to fight an election. Shereturned to Pakistan in 1986 and, in 1988,after the death of the President and militaryruler of Pakistan, General Zia (the man who,after a military coup in 1977, had imprisonedher father), she became the democraticallyelected Prime Minister of Pakistan.As an alumnus, Benazir Bhutto maintainedan active link with Catz in the years thatfollowed her graduation and, in 1989, duringthe middle of her first term of office as PrimeMinister, she was elected to an HonoraryFellowship of the College.Her year at Catz was anextraordinarily busy one ...Professor Denis Cosgrove: Cultural andhistorical geographerDenis Cosgrove was widely viewed as the preeminentcultural and historical geographer ofhis generation. He was a polymath reminiscentof the Renaissance humanists he admired,and his innovative and sparkling studiesimmeasurably deepened understanding ofhow changing Western perceptions haveviewed, interpreted and transformed theworld around them. His gifted teaching anddedicated supervision, no less than his dozenbooks and scores of essays, inspired colleaguesand students throughout the humanities andthe natural and social sciences, well beyond hischosen discipline. Indeed, interdisciplinarity wasfor him an article of faith.Cosgrove's central mission was to illuminatethe dynamic interplay between the world'sdiverse material landscapes and equally diversemodes of imagining and exploring them.That overarching programme began with his1976 doctoral dissertation on the Palladiantownscape in Vicenza and the Veneto. As hisexternal examiner, I had the privilege of62/BENAZIR BHUTTO