Born and raised in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales, during the Depression years, Robert Hyslop began his public service career in the Department of Defence (Naval) in 1936 and moved to Melbourne in 1941. He married Dorothy Fleming in 1946 and the family lived in Melbourne with one year (1958) in England before moving to Canberra with the first part of the Department of the Navy in 1959. Soon after the move he became assistant secretary, continuing his association with this Department until 1978. He headed the Honours Secretariat in the Department of the Special Minister of State until his retirement in 1981. In retirement he graduated with a Diploma of Art from the Canberra School of Art, majoring in sculpture.
He was a public service fellow at the Australian National University in 1968-69, and wrote Australian Naval Administration 1900-1939 (1973). He was deputy secretary-general of SEATO at Bangkok, Thailand, from 1970-74 and secretary of the Royal Commission on Human Relationships from 1974-76. Aye, Aye Minister: Australian Naval Administration 1939-59 (1990), was written when he was a visting fellow in the Department of Political Science, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University from 1987 - 92. He also published Dear You: A Guide to Forms of Address (1991); Australian Mandarins: Perceptions of the Role of Departmental Secretaries (1994); First Encounter: Communicating with Institutions and Organisations (1994) and his autobiography A Very Civil Servant (1998).
He contributed articles, essay and reviews to journals and entries to the Australian Dictionary of Biography on naval history and public administration, and conducted oral history interviews with former public servants for the National Library. He was a member of the Society of Editors and the Society of Indexers and worked as a consultant editor and indexer.
