Early Life
Burns was born in Port Sunlight, Bebington, Wirral, to an English father and German mother. His mother Eva was Jewish and born in Heidelberg, Germany. She had fled to Vienna, Austria to escape the anti-Semitic laws of the Nazis. It was in Vienna that she met Burns' father, then a British soldier, at a soldiers' tea dance.
When talking about his late mother in an interview for television programme Psychic Therapy, he said "as far as parental skills go in the conventional, normal world, she certainly wasn't a mother, but she's the best human being that I've ever had the privilege of being in the company of, and I know that she had a special plan for me. She called me Star Baby and she knew that there was something special in me. Just an incredible German woman; tiny, five-foot-one, but she could move a fucking wardrobe, she could lift a wardrobe." Burns also told that for the first five years of his life, he and his mother spoke to one another in German. "I grew up until I was five speaking German and a bit of French. There was no English spoken in my house. My father spoke to my mother in French, she spoke to me in German."
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“... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,—if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.”
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