He was born in Chelsea, London on 29 July 1906, the son of Major George Bernard Hill OBE (1874-1961), a stockbroker, and Frances Grace Johnstone, daughter of John Heywood Johnstone MP of Bignor Park, Sussex, and they lived at 37 Draycott Place, Chelsea and Great Orchard, Bignor, Pulborough, Sussex.
[2] On 2 August 1936, he founded Heywood Hill with the help of Lady Anne Gathorne-Hardy, who would later become his wife.
[3] They sold the bookshop in 1965, and retired to his wife's childhood home, Snape Priory, where they cared for her mother until she died in 1969.
Following Heywood's death in 1986, after some years with Parkinson's disease, her daughter and son-in-law Harriet and Simon Frazer came to live with her.
[4] In 2016, Heywood Hill celebrated 80 years in the same premises with its "Library of a Lifetime Award" which will give the winner "one newly published and hand-picked hardback book per month, for life, delivered anywhere in the world".