In 2009, he retired from academia and was appointed Professor Emeritus of Welsh History at the University of Wales.
Born on 24 January 1946, Jenkins attended grammar school in Aberystwyth and then completed his undergraduate studies at the University College of Wales, Swansea, in 1967.
In 1993, he was appointed Director of the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, serving until 2008; in 2009, he was appointed Emeritus Professor at the University of Wales.
[4] The book has been described as "a scholarly feast", but a reviewer also warned that "...it must run some risk of satiating the appetite it is designed to whet.
[8] He received a doctor of letters degree from the University of Wales in 1994.