After working for a year in the Hungarian government's land redistribution department, he studied classical music and jazz at a Budapest music academy.

Escaping Hungary after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, he managed to get to Britain in 1957.

[1] Attending evening classes, Berki gained O- and A-levels, and entered London School of Economics in 1961, securing a first-class degree in international relations in 1964.

In 1962 he married Etelka Taph, also Hungarian, whom he had met at a jazz club in Stalintown near Budapest.

He gained his PhD from Cambridge University, writing a thesis supervised by E. H. Carr on the political thought of Hegel and Marx.