Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), a human gamma-herpesvirus, was the first virus linked causally with a human tumour, following its identification in 1964 by Epstein, Barr and Achong in a common childhood cancer in equatorial Africa named after Burkitt (Burkitt’s lymphoma or BL), who first described the malignancy. Over the ensuing half century, it has come to light that EBV is not only causally linked with BL but a diverse array of epithelial and lymphoid tumours including anaplastic nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), Hodgkin’s lymphoma (HL) subsets and post-transplant lymphoproliferative disease (PTLD). Although the precise role of EBV is not entirely clear in some of these lesions, the virus encodes growth-promoting oncogenes and has evolved numerous mechanisms to evade immune surveillance.