Charles Grenville Picton-Warlow, born at Kalgoorlie, was the son of John Grenville and Myra Picton-Warlow. He was educated at Perth Modern School and the Universities of Adelaide and Western Australia and played Rugby for the University of Western Australia. In his school-days he had shown great promise as a flautist, but he elected to take up medicine as a career in preference to music.

Grenville, as he was known to his family and intimate friends, was admitted to practice in 1959. He was among the first batch of medical graduates of the University of Western Australia, the last three years of the course having been taken in WA. Upon admission he was awarded the Gold Medal of the British Medical Association for that year.

Grenville's subsequent career included two years in neonatal research under the guidance of Eric Burnard at the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, Sydney, a period as lecturer in paediatrics under Professor William MacDonald in Western Australia, and two years in research at the Hammersmith Hospital, England, with Professor Tizard.

In 1969 he was returning to Western Australia to take up a post as senior lecturer at the University, and to assist Professor MacDonald in founding a research unit. Travelling via America he delivered lectures at the Universities of Yale, Boston, Montreal and Detroit on the subject of his work at Hammersmith, but was killed in an air crash at Indianapolis on 9 September 1969. The notes upon which his lectures were based were lost in the disaster, and with them, much of the value of his work at Hammersmith. Professor Tizard, in a letter to Professor MacDonald after Grenville's death, concluded:

He really was a remarkable man both from the standpoint of personal character and professional ability, and he would have had a great future in Australian paediatrics. I feel that we were very lucky to have had him at Hammersmith for as long as two years, and as you know, he did splendid work here.

Grenville Picton-Warlow's immediate family were his wife, Rosina (nee Strempel), his three children, James, Camilla and Miranda, his parents, his brother John and his sister Judith.