Burke attended Oxford University. For four years, he held a position as an investigative reporter at the Sunday Times.[3] He relocated to Pakistan in 1998 to cover events there and in Afghanistan. During this period, he also travelled to Baghdad and Basra. Around 2000, he was hired by The Observer to serve as its chief foreign correspondent. Since then, he has become the South Asia correspondent for The Guardian, The Observer's sister publication, as well. As of 2010, he is based in New Delhi.
Prior to his assignment to New Delhi, Burke was based in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Paris, but his work has taken him to many locations. According to a book review in 2006 in The Daily Telegraph, Burke "is one of the journalistic band of brothers whose job is to get to the trouble spots ahead of the TV crews and show the electronic media what it is all about". His travels have included Gaza, Kurdistan, Thailand, Algeria, and Jordan, among others. Burke also wrote "On the Road to Kandahar", and more recently the critically acclaimed "9/11 Wars" released in October 2011 which he discusses in detail in issue 5 of Umbrella Magazine.