His father, Richard, founded an industrial machinery business and his mother, Hilda, was a sculptor, author, activist, and philanthropist.

During World War II, Seligman served with the 6th Armoured Divisional Signals, rising to the rank of major.

Company, based in Crawley, produced a wide range of industrial equipment, mainly for food and drink processing.

Seligman was well known as the oldest friend of the former prime minister Sir Edward Heath whom he met at Balliol College, Oxford, in 1937.

[4] In 1939, in the days before the outbreak of war, he was on a hiking holiday with Heath in Germany and Poland, an especially risky endeavour for Seligman, who was half Jewish.