He was educated at George Watson's College (1932–40) before attending Edinburgh University, where he was awarded a BA (first-class honours).
[1][2] Due to poor eyesight, he was declared unfit for military service in the Second World War, and so worked as a sub-editor for the news department of the BBC.
[2] Abandoning his membership of the Communist Party, Burns converted to Roman Catholicism during the war and from 1950 he contributed to the Innes Review, which analysed the role of the Catholic Church in Scottish history.
Also in 1947, he married Yvonne Birnie and was appointed lecturer in political theory at Aberdeen University.
[2] He took up a readership in the history of political thought at University College London and in 1961 he was the founding editor of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, a position he held until 1979.