Yardley is a graduate of Walter Hines Page High School in Greensboro, North Carolina and received a B.A. in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, class of '86. He joined the Times in 1997 and first worked as a metropolitan reporter in New York, and then became the bureau chief in Houston in 1999. His topics have included social unrest, minority uprisings, and pollution issues in China. He was the South Asia bureau chief based in New Delhi until 2013, when he moved to Rome and became the bureau chief there. After 13 years as a foreign correspondent, Yardley and his family moved to London where he now works as the Europe editor.