[3] He transferred to the 13th Duke of Connaught's Lancers, which served on the north-west frontier of India,[1] in June 1919 and received a promotion to captain in January 1920.
[4] In 1922, Burdon, having married Jean Stewart Bowden two years before,[1] retired from the Indian Army, still as a captain,[5] and returned to New Zealand.
One of several volumes of the Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939–45, his book was published in 1953 and was followed two years later with a biography of Richard Seddon.
In 1965, he produced The New Dominion, a social history of New Zealand from 1919 to 1939, but critics noted it was heavily based on newspapers and secondary sources.
He was a contributor to the publication An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, which was printed after his death at home from coal gas poisoning on 28–29 November 1965.