John Burton (diplomat)
Australian diplomat and academic
John Wear Burton (2 March 1915 – 23 June 2010) was an Australian public servant, high commissioner and academic.
Early life
Burton was born in Melbourne, the son of the Rev John Wear Burton, a Methodist Minister. He was educated at Newington College (1924–1932) and went on to graduate from the University of Sydney in 1937.
Public service
In 1937 Burton became a member of the Commonwealth Public Service from where he was granted a Commonwealth scholarship to pursue a doctorate at the London School of Economics. He joined the Department of External Affairs in 1941 and served as private secretary to Herbert Vere Evatt. In 1947, aged 32, he became Secretary of the Department of External Affairs and held that position until June 1950. At the beginning of 1951 he took up the position of Australian High Commissioner to Ceylon, but resigned to return home and contest the Federal election of that year in the electorate of Lowe. As the Australian Labor Party (ALP) candidate he was beaten by William McMahon, a future Prime Minister of Australia.
Academic career
While writing his first book, The Alternative, Burton farmed outside Canberra and owned a bookshop in the suburb of Kingston. In 1960 he was awarded a fellowship at the Australian National University.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Burton (diplomat)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.