George Milner was born on 26 May 1922 in Kingston, Jamaica, where his father, Edgar Webb Milner, was an accountant. His mother was Ida Emerett née Dixon. Educated at Kingston College, he went on to the University of Aberdeen to study medicine. On graduating, he returned to Jamaica to be a casualty officer in the Government Medical Service, and went on to do a surgical internship at the Kingston Public Hospital. He decided to specialise in otorhinolaryngology in 1953, after an appointment to the Kingston Public Hospital. He returned to the UK in 1956 to study for the FRCS at the College, the Institute of Laryngology and Otology, and the Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital. After passing the FRCS, he went back to Jamaica, as a consultant in the ENT department at Kingston Public Hospital in 1959. He was appointed head of his department in 1962 and consultant to the University Hospital of the West Indies, Mona. He was a Visiting Professor in Otolaryngology at Columbia University, New York, in 1970. In 1973 he resigned from the Jamaican Government Medical Service and in 1978 went to Canada to be ENT surgeon to the Charlottetown Clinic, Prince Edward Island, becoming a Canadian citizen in 1981. He married Pamela née Skeif in 1951. They had four sons, Robert George, Warren, Peter and David. He died on 24 January 2002.