Sel­ma van de Perre was a mem­ber of the Dutch resis­tance orga­ni­za­tion TD Group dur­ing World War II. Short­ly after the war she moved to Lon­don, where she worked for the BBC and met her future hus­band, the Bel­gian jour­nal­ist Hugo van de Perre. For a num­ber of years she also worked as for­eign cor­re­spon­dent for a Dutch tele­vi­sion sta­tion. In 1983 Sel­ma van de Perre received the Dutch Resis­tance Com­mem­o­ra­tion Cross. She lives in Lon­don and has a son.