Born in London, England, Heller attended Christ's Hospital in the Sussex countryside, served in the Royal Army Service Corps, and then attended Jesus College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a double first in history.
[1] In 1955, Heller started to work for the Financial Times, where in 1958 he was made US correspondent.
[1] In 1966, Heller was founding editor of Management Today, a monthly business magazine published by Haymarket Publishing, where he worked for two decades.
Here he started a second career as a writer of business books.
[1] During the early 1970s, he started a relationship with gallerist Angela Flowers, whom he eventually married in 2003.