Sir Hilary Rudolph Robert Blood was born on 28 May 1893 in Glasgow, Scotland, and educated at the Irvine Royal Academy and at Glasgow University. He served in World War I in the Royal Scots Fusiliers and was wounded in the Gallipoli campaign. In 1920, Blood entered the Ceylon Civil Service as a cadet (1920-1930), later serving as Colonial Secretary in Grenada (1930-1934) and in Sierra Leone (1934-1942). He was then appointed to Governorships in The Gambia (1942-1947), Barbados (1947-1949), and Mauritius (1949-1954), before spending two years serving as Constitutional Commissioner in British Honduras (Belize) (1959) and in Zanzibar (1960). In 1960, he was Chairman of the Malta Constitutional Commission.

During his retirement, he worked frequently for the Civil Service Commission, both as a group chairman at the Civil Service selection board, testing candidates for the administrative class of the Home Civil Service and the senior branch of the Foreign Service, and as a member of the final selection boards in the same class of competition.

Blood was active in the service of the Royal Commonwealth Society and was Chairman of both the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind (1962-1965) and the Royal Society of Arts (1963-1965). He was appointed CMG (1934), KCMG (1944), and GBE (1953), and received an honorary LLD from Glasgow University (1944). Sir Blood died on 20 Jun 1967 in Ashford, Kent.