The family were very poor: Pinchas worked making caps at a Jewish immigrant's factory called Goldstein & Co, Commercial Road, Stepney and they lived at 12 Marks Street, Aldgate.

Abraham was put up for adoption by a cobbler, Pinchas Slaberdain, and his wife Eva at 154 Oxford Street, Commercial Road, Stepney.

[1] A scholarship paid for the London School of Economics where he read Friedrich Hayek, Arnold Plant and Lionel Robbins served to deepen his interest in classical liberalism.

Seldon was working at the Brewer's Society in 1956 when approached by Lord Grantchester to be asked if he wanted to join a new 'Think Tank' just set up by Antony Fisher on the advice of Friedrich Hayek, founder of the Chicago School of economics and champion of free market neoliberalism.

Seldon wrote a first pamphlet still only 20 years of age, called "The Intellectuals and Socialism" (1937) in which he criticised the Keynesian state and its bureaucracy as "second hand dealers in ideas.

He was on a Committee of Enquiry chaired by Elliott Dodds into the distribution of property, exploring the idea of "ownership for all," and the effects of statist maldistribution.

The ideas imported from Chicago had a great influence on members of the Conservative party, especially Enoch Powell, Sir Keith Joseph, and Margaret Thatcher.

He organised a conference in 1978 called "Economics in Britain" – the American economist James Buchanan, founder of Public Choice was invited.

[2] Seldon won the Fisher Arts Literary Prize in 1991, although it was established by the founder of IEA, so nobody minded the eternal paradox, for his book Capitalism.

Seldon's widow Marjorie was interviewed about his work at the IEA and the rise of Thatcherism for the 2006 BBC TV documentary series Tory!