Background
He is the son of the Wall scholar Eric Birley and brother to Anthony Birley.
He is the son of the Wall scholar Eric Birley and brother to Anthony Birley.
He was educated at Clifton College, before spending some years with the Royal Marines before returning to work at Vindolanda and becoming the Director of the Vindolanda Trust.
He was formerly the Director of Excavations at the Roman site of Vindolanda, and now heads the Vindolanda research committee. Robin has excavated extensively at the site of Vindolanda and was intimately involved in the discovery of the Vindolanda Tablets in 1973 and their subsequent interpretation and publication. These are a series of wooden tablets containing Latin script and are the oldest surviving handwritten script in Britain.
These are published in text and on an online catalogue.
He had published extensively on the Vindolanda site as well as appearing in several television documentaries, including the 2003 British Broadcasting Corporation production of Our Top Ten Treasures.