Born in 1928, Daphne Selfe grew up in London and the Home Counties, before being sent to boarding school during the Second World War. Just after her 21st birthday she won a local magazine cover-girl competition and joined the Gaby Young Agency in London, where she trained to be a model. She has been an artist's model, a department-store model and a commercial model, appearing in advertisements for anything from clothes to breakfast cereal to gin. Happily married for many years to Jim Smith, who worked in theatre and television production, Daphne stopped modelling and moved to Hertfordshire, where she still lives, to bring up their three children. But when her husband died after a long illness, she was suddenly rediscovered - at the age of 70. She has been working continuously ever since.