Burton was born Richard Walter Jenkins in the village of Pontrhydyfen, Neath Port Talbot, Wales. He grew up in a working class and Welsh-speaking household. He was the twelfth of thirteen children of a Welsh coal miner. His mother died before he was two years old. He was raised by his much older sister and her husband. He took his surname from his guardian Philip Burton, a teacher who coached him until he won a scholarship to Oxford University at the age of eighteen.