On 16 June 1945, as a Commander in the Metropolitan Police Special Branch, Burt was assigned to accompany war-time traitor William Joyce (also known as "Lord Haw-Haw") back to London to be tried for treason, after Joyce was captured by British forces in Germany.
William Shakespeare | William Laud | James Joyce | William Blake | William | William III of England | William Morris | William McKinley | William Howard Taft | William Ewart Gladstone | William the Conqueror | William S. Burroughs | William Shatner | William Faulkner | William Randolph Hearst | William Wordsworth | William Tecumseh Sherman | William Hogarth | Prince William, Duke of Cambridge | William Penn | William Jennings Bryan | William Gibson | Joyce Carol Oates | William Wilberforce | William James | William Makepeace Thackeray | Fort William | William Hanna | William Hague | William III |
He has written a biography of his own father, John Beckett, a Labour MP from 1925 to 1931 and whip of the Independent Labour Party group of MPs; later chief propagandist for Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists and co-founder (with William Joyce) of the National Socialist League, who was interned during the second world war for his fascist activities.
In one of his recent books, The Important Books: Children’s Picture Books as Art and Literature, he examines the picture-books of such artist-writers as Maurice Sendak, Chris Van Allsburg, Arnold Lobel, and William Joyce.