He was a grandson of "the Welsh Swagman", Joseph Jenkins, whose voluminous Australian diaries over 25 years (1869-1894) he edited and published as excerpts in 1975.
[2]: p24 His autobiography relates how he worked as a bank clerk from 1912 and enlisted for military service in 1914, serving with the Buffs and as an officer of the Lancashire Fusiliers at Ypres and Passchendaele Ridge, 1916–1918.
[3] He was appointed house physician to Sir John Parkinson at the hospital, later becoming his chief assistant in the Heart Department.
He also assisted Lord Dawson of Penn in use of the electrocardiograph, with which he once favourably determined the disputed state of health of prime minister Stanley Baldwin.
In retirement, he ultimately settled at Bryndomen, near Tregaron, and overlooking the Domen (burial mound) close to the Teifi River, where he was known as "Wil Blocks" because of a substantial concrete-block wall around his residence.