Seltman was born in Stamford Hill, a Jewish neighborhood of London,[2] on 27 March 1927.
[5] They traveled with their son to North Korea,[6] where Seltman worked as a teacher, but, bored with the North Korean cult of personality and their life there,[5] left for China in 1965, just in time for the Cultural Revolution.
Disillusioned, they returned to England in 1966,[6] and Seltman later wrote a book What's Left?
[8] She also completed a PhD at University College London, with the dissertation Descartes's "Regulae ad directionem ingenii": a case-study in the emergence of early modern algebra (1987).
[9] Although of Jewish descent, she became a nontheist Quaker, and despite her early experiences continued to describe herself as a Marxist.