Robert Byron (26 February 1905 - 24 February 1941) was a British travel writer, best known for his travelogue The Road to Oxiana. He was also a noted writer, art critic and historian.
Born in Middlesex and educated at Eton and Merton College, Oxford, he was a forceful advocate for the preservation of historic buildings and a founder member of the Georgian Group.
Byron travelled to widely different places, including Mount Athos, India, the Soviet Union, and Tibet. He forged his style of modern travel writing whilst travelling in Persia and Afghanistan, and wrote up his account of The Road to Oxiana (1937) in Peking, his temporary home.
Byron died during the Second World War in 1941 when the ship on which he was travelling, the SS Jonathan Holt, was torpedoed by a U-Boat off Cape Wrath, Scotland, en route to Egypt. He was 35 years old.