John Paul Burrough MBE (5 May 1916 - 27 January 2003) was Bishop of Mashonaland from 1968 to 1981.
He was born into an ecclesiastical family[1] on 5 May 1916 and educated at St Edward's School, Oxford, and St Edmund Hall, Oxford.[2] He was a skilled rower and was in the Oxford crews that beat Cambridge in the Boat Races of 1937 and 1938.[3]
During the Second World War, he was commissioned in 1940 into the Royal Signals. In 1942 he became a prisoner of war in Malaya. In 1946 he was appointed a member of the military division of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for his leadership in the PoW camps.
Ordained in 1951,[4] his first post was a curacy in Aldershot. After this he was a missionary priest in Korea[5] and then (his final post before elevation to the episcopate[6]) Anglican chaplain to overseas peoples in Birmingham. During this time he brought together a successful Trinidadian steel band and enabled them to find engagements, including a regular annual performance at the summer ball of his alma mater, St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He was Bishop of Mashonaland[7] in the Province of Central Africa from 1968[8] to 1981. On his return to England, he was Rector of Empingham and an honorary assistant bishop in the Diocese of Peterborough, 1981–1985. A Sub-Prelate of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, he died on 27 January 2003.[9]