This is how I managed to solve this.

FileStream xmlFS = new FileStream(Server.MapPath("/xml/timeline.xml"), FileMode.OpenOrCreate, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.Read);

System.Xml.XmlReaderSettings settings = new System.Xml.XmlReaderSettings();
settings.XmlResolver = null;
settings.DtdProcessing = System.Xml.DtdProcessing.Parse;

// Create the XmlReader object.
System.Xml.XmlReader reader = System.Xml.XmlReader.Create(xmlFS, settings);    

if (reader != null)
{
    System.Text.StringBuilder sbXML  = new System.Text.StringBuilder();

    while (reader.Read())            
    {
        @sbXML.AppendLine(reader.ReadOuterXml());
    }

    // Convert the xml string to a DynamicXml object
    dynamic xmlFeed = Library.ToDynamicXml(sbXML.ToString());

    // Retrieve the items
    Umbraco.Core.Dynamics.DynamicXml items = xmlFeed.XPath("/xmlFeed/item");

An alternative I thought of would be to deserialize into a class and output using the object.

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