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. His favourite word is Sharawaggi, he would like his double helix to combine musicality and common sense, he has a huge vocabulary in several languages and no grammar in any. He enjoys drinking, eating, women, reading, writing, urban walking, typefaces, follies, architecture, guitars, rugby, cricket, F1, Wales, London, the USA and Europe. He dislikes ‘features’, ‘slebrities’ and ‘communities’. He describes enjoyment as a two-bottle lunch with an old friend. He is married, with a tortoise, one mog and a Golden Retriever.
Here is the new, even more correct version of the jacket blurb from his 2005 book “The Encyclopaedia of Fonts” (Cassell Illustrated, ISBN 1-84403-206-X):
"Gwyn Headley’s comfortably blurred memories of the 1960s include failing to become a rock star (despite his group The Sloane Squares playing with Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, John Lee Hooker, Pink Floyd, the Small Faces and others) and instead discovering a passion for typography at St Martin’s School of Art in London’s Charing Cross Road. He has somehow combined a lifetime in publishing with writing books on architecture, follies, fonts and Mah-Jong; selling listed buildings, and founding the world’s first entirely digital picture library. He has spent ten months of his life at the Frankfurt Book Fair and to his eternal regret has never scored a try for Llanelli Scarlets or Wales."