Born in Oswaldkirk, North Yorkshire, her father was the sculptor John Bunting, who also taught drawing at the Catholic independent school Ampleforth College. The fourth of five children, **Madeleine** was the youngest daughter from his marriage to Romola Farquharson; the couple separated in 1978. She was educated at Richmond Convent, North Yorkshire, and Brighton, Hove & Sussex VI Form College, followed by Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and then Harvard University, where Bunting read History, and received a Knox postgraduate fellowship to study Politics and to teach.