Burke was born on 8 March 1922 in Rye, Sussex, and educated at Holt High School, Liverpool, now known as Childwall Academy.
He achieved equal popularity with his science fiction short stories in magazines like New Worlds and New Frontiers, and the best of these were collected in Alien Landscapes (1955).
His first two SF novels, The Dark Gateway (1953) and The Echoing Worlds (1954), both dealt with the theme of parallel universes; and Pursuit Through Time (1956) described an attempt to change the course of history while time-travelling into the past.
For more than thirty years Burke novelised a large number of stage plays, film and TV scripts, notably John Osborne's The Entertainer and Look Back in Anger, The Angry Silence (all 1960), Flame in the Streets (1961), The Lion of Sparta (1961; the film was released as The 300 Spartans), The Boys (1962), The System (1963), A Hard Day's Night (1964), Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965), That Magnificent Air Race (1965; the film was released as Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines), The Hammer Horror Omnibus (1966/7; two volumes), Till Death Us Do Part, Privilege (both 1967), Smashing Time, Ian Fleming's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (both 1968), Moon Zero Two (1969), Luke's Kingdom (1976), King and Castle (1986) and a series of The Bill novels, beginning in 1985.
Robert Hale also published five novels in the last decade: Stalking Widow (2000), The Second Strain (2002), Wrong Turnings (2004), Hang Time (2007) and The Merciless Dead (2008).