His father worked for Shell and moved around the world; Bland and his younger brother were largely brought up by relatives in Northern Ireland.

Bland spent his National Service with the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards and afterwards became involved in Conservative Party politics.

Bland was elected as a member of the Greater London Council (GLC) for Lewisham from 1967, and later became Chairman of the Schools committee of the ILEA.

During the 1970s, Bland ran the construction and engineering firm Beyer Peacock and printers Sir Joseph Causton & Sons.

Bland retained his involvement in politics and was critical of changes made by Margaret Thatcher to Conservative Central Office staff shortly after her election as Leader in 1975.

In 1981, Bland married Jennifer Mary Denise May, now known as Lady Bland (from 1963 to 1981 married to Viscount Enfield, when she was titled Lady Enfield), and the daughter of William May, the former Ulster Unionist Party MP for the Ards constituency in County Down, and Minister for Education for Northern Ireland in the 1950s.

[18] His second novel, Cathar, has been characterised as "look[ing] mortality straight in the eye, with humanity, grace and courage",[19] and was described by the Historical Novel Society as "a fast-moving, well-told, and honest novel".

[5] Bland was the father of print journalist and former deputy editor of The Independent newspaper, Archie Bland,[17] and from 1981 became stepfather to four children, who include the 9th Earl of Strafford, the author Lady Georgia Byng, and the managing director of the Edinburgh-based publishing house Canongate Books, Jamie Byng, following his wife's earlier marriage to Viscount Enfield (1963–1981).

[15][22] Named in his honour, the RSL Christopher Bland Prize was launched in 2018 by the Royal Society of Literature to encourage the work of older writers and awarded annually to an author of a fiction or non-fiction book who was first published when aged 50 or over.