Selina Molteno

Selina Molteno is the great granddaughter of Sir John Charles Molteno, the first prime minister of the Cape Colony. She continued the family tradition of politics, but in a rather unexpected direction. She was arrested during the apartheid era and worked subsequently for the Anti-Apartheid Movement in London. Selina was a ballet dancer with the Grand Ballet de Marquis de Cuevas in Paris when Rudolf Nureyev defected to the company, her account of that period being published as Letters from an Intrepid Ballet Dancer (2015). She also lived in Nigeria during the civil war and in Trinidad. Her co-authored memoir of her Nigerian experience appeared as An Expatriate Family in the Nigerian Civil War (2020). Selina has worked in academic publishing for over thirty years. She is married to a university professor, Robin Cohen, and lives in Oxford.