Biography
Born in Nottingham, England, his family emigrated to Canada when he was young where he later studied at McGill University. Between 1980 and 1981, he studied Russian at Harvard, and in 1984 he studied Chinese at Cambridge University. From 1998-99, he was a visiting fellow at King's College, Cambridge, studying Islamic history and culture. He also speaks French and German.
In the early 1970s, Burns wrote for the Canadian Globe and Mail, as a local and later parliamentary reporter. He was sent to China in 1971 to be among one of few Western journalists in China during the Cultural Revolution, after a confusion that led to his brief ban from the precincts of Parliament by the Commons Speaker. Burns joined The New York Times in 1975, reporting, at first, for the paper's metropolitan section, and has written ever since for the newspaper in various capacities.
He has been assigned to and headed several of the Times foreign bureaus. He and fellow Times journalists John Darnton and Michael T. Kaufman won the 1978 George Polk Award for foreign reporting for coverage of Africa. Burns was the Times bureau chief in Moscow from 1981-84. In 1986, while chief of the Times Beijing bureau, Burns was incarcerated on suspicion of espionage by the Chinese government. Charges were dropped after an investigation, but Burns was subsequently expelled from the country.
Burns received his second Pulitzer in 1997, this time "For his courageous and insightful coverage of the harrowing regime imposed on Afghanistan by the Taliban".
Burns was based in Baghdad during the lead up to the Iraq war in 2003 and has written extensively on the war and the subsequent occupation. In July 2007, Burns succeeded Alan Cowell as bureau chief in London. On 30 September 2007, Burns received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colby College.
Burns is a frequent contributor to PBS, including a number of appearances on the Charlie Rose show and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer via satellite from Afghanistan and Iraq. In a January 2009 interview, Michael Barone called Burns "one of the great foreign correspondents of our time".
Read more about this topic: John F. Burns
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