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). During the 1923 vacation the club visited Gaumont Studios in Shepherd's Bush, London, and in the Michaelmas Term of that year it went to Famous Players-Lasky Studio in Islington, London, where George Pearson was shooting Reveille. Pearson later gave a talk to the CUKC in Lent Term, 1924.The Cambridge Mercury, vol. II, no. 9 (23 January 1924), p. 2; George Pearson, Flashback: The Autobiography of a British Filmmaker (Allen & Unwin, 1957), pp. 122-123. Pearson's comedies would be a particular enthusiasm of Burford's in his early writing on film.Roger Burford, 'What Next, and Then?', Close Up, vol. II, no. 2 (February 1928), pp. 35-44. In Michaelmas term 1923 Burford became friends with fellow CUKC member Christopher Isherwood. He is fictionalised as "Roger East" in Isherwood's novel Lions and Shadows. After graduating, Burford registered for two terms at Leicester School of Art, having some talent as a painter. In the spring of 1926 he briefly taught Greek at Wooton Court Preparatory School. 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. Stella appears as "Polly" in Lions and Shadows. 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.Peter Parker, Isherwood McMillan, 2005, p. 141 The two men corresponded throughout the 1930s and Burford's letters are preserved in Isherwood's papers in the Huntington Library.David Garrett Izzo, Christopher Isherwood Encyclopedia (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2005, 28
