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Sir Robert John (Robin) Maxwell-Hyslop was born on 6th June 1931 in Buckingham to Captain Alexander Henry Maxwell-Hyslop, a naval officer. He was educated at Upper College, Toronto, and Stowe School, where he decided to become an MP. He read PPE at Christ Church Oxford and became the president of the University Conservative Association, before taking his first job as a graduate apprentice at Rolls-Royce Aero-Engine Division in 1954.

He contested the seat of Derby North in 1959, where he halved the majority of the incumbent MP, before being selected in 1960 as the Conservative candidate for a by-election in the safe seat of Tiverton in Devon. He held the seat until 1992. His main parliamentary concerns were over the engineering and aircraft industry, tourism, agriculture, defence policy and economics; he was an active member of the Trade and Industry Select Committee from 1971 to 1992, and the Procedure Select Committee from 1979 to 1992.

He was uninterested in becoming a minister, allowing him to defy the party whips as he saw fit, and was mainly concerned with his constituents and with parliamentary procedure, of which he had an encyclopaedic knowledge. Some of his most noteworthy contributions to politics include the alteration of the system by which Speakers are elected, persuading the Speaker to publish all his Private Rulings, and his vital role in the election of Bernard Weatherill to Speaker of the House of Commons.

He was also fluent in Portuguese, won the first ever Politician of the Year award in 1989, and was the last Conservative MP to ask Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher a question at Prime Minister's Questions.

He was knighted upon his retirement from politics in 1992 and died on 13 January 2010, leaving a wife and two daughters.

Description:

Papers include articles by or about Sir Robin Maxwell-Hyslop, speeches by him, correspondence with Speakers of the House of Commons and others, and papers relating to the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Bill of 1977.