As a child Headley lived in Accra, Gold Coast (now Ghana); Krumpendorf, Austria; Berlin, Germany; Warsaw, Poland; Westmalle, Belgium and Paris, France before his family settled in Chelsea in 1959.
Living in Chelsea in the 1960s, he formed The Sloane Squares,[1] a beat group which played many venues across the capital, supporting John Lee Hooker, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, the Small Faces, Eric Clapton, Peter Frampton and others.
An enthusiast of eccentric architecture since childhood, his first book on follies,[10][11][12] written with Dutch art historian Wim Meulenkamp, was published for the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty by Jonathan Cape in 1986.
That's half the pleasure of the things: if they could be categorised and catalogued and pinned down like specimen butterflies we would lose that frisson of excitement and mystery when another unidentified ghostly grey ruin looms up out of a wet wood.
The author blurb described him as follows: "Gwyn Headley’s comfortably blurred memories of the 1960s include failing to become a rock star (despite playing with Hendrix, Clapton, Pink Floyd, the Small Faces, John Lee Hooker and others) and instead discovering a passion for typography at St. Martin’s School of Art in London’s Charing Cross Road.
The latter is notable for its typically British self-deprecating autobiography: "Gwyn describes himself as enthusiastic, lazy, persistent, creative, fat, well-educated, pedantic, polite, greedy, gentle, prejudiced, kind, unreliable, well-meaning, curious, shy, gregarious, snobbish, confident, cowardly, optimistic, comfortable, irritable, at ease, nervous, thirsty, tired, willing, competent, unselfconscious, spry, hard-working, querulous, prolix and cheerful.
He enjoys drinking, eating, women, reading, writing, urban walking, typefaces, architecture, guitars, rugby, cricket, F1, Wales, London, the USA and Europe.