His mother, Alice Gibbons Grinling was a watercolourist who exhibited at the R.A.,1889-1892. He was educated at Harrow. Having been gassed and decorated during his war service with the Hertfordshire Regiment, he studied sculpture with an Italian sculptor when convalescing at Taormina, Sicily, 1919-20. During much of his career he also worked for his family firm, the wine merchants Gilbey's, eventually becoming Managing Director. In 1924 he made miniature sculptures for the garden of Queen Mary's Dolls House, designed by the architect Edwin Lutyens. For the entrance foyer and interior of the Cambridge Theatre, London, (designed by his architect friend Serge Chermayeff), he executed an important series of three bronze friezes of nude figures in low relief, on the themes of Dance, Music and Drama.(1930). He carved sculpture, usually of nude male or female figures, in wood, and modelled in clay for casting in bronze. He also made portrait heads, carved and modelled, some religious works, some trophies (The Anton Dolin Award for dancing, for example) and later in his career, many abstract carvings and a number of reliefs in plywood. Among his friends was Henry Moore, and some of his sculpture has affinities with Moore's work. His Reclining Figure (c.1931 Honduras Mahogany),his Mother And Child a seated mother kissing a single child (c.1929, polished Kauri pine) and his Family Group (c.1949, cedar), a mother with two children in her arms, seated mother kissing a single child are all typically characterised by smooth and highly finished forms and surfaces, which exploit and express the beauty of the grain of the wood. He did some painting and his furniture designs included tubular steel furniture for Whiteley's Department Store in 1934. He lived in London and later Willtshire.