Burford attended Gonville and Caius College at the University of Cambridge, going up in autumn 1922, and taking the English Tripos.
In Easter Term 1923 he was a founder member of the Cambridge University Kinema Club (CUKC).
[4] In Michaelmas term 1923 Burford became friends with fellow CUKC member Christopher Isherwood.
He then moved to London, sharing rooms in a boarding house on Redcliffe Road, Chelsea, with the painter Stella Wilkinson (1903-1944), whom he had met at Leicester School of Art.
The couple left London for a trip to Milan in September 1926, letting Isherwood take over their rooms.
On 28 April 1927 Burford married Stella in a London registry office, with Isherwood one of the two witnesses.
[5] The two men corresponded throughout the 1930s and Burford's letters are preserved in Isherwood's papers in the Huntington Library.