Bunting was born Clare Bunting in Oswaldkirk, North Yorkshire, the daughter of Romola Jane (Farquharson) and sculptor John Bunting, who taught drawing at the Catholic independent school Ampleforth College. 'The Plot' was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize 2010 and won the Portico Prize. Her ancestry is English, Irish, Scottish, and, through her maternal grandmother, Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewish. In 2016 she published "Love of Country, A Hebridean Journey" which was shortlisted for the Golden Beer Wainright Prize and The Saltire Society Prize. The fourth of five children, Madeleine was the youngest daughter from John and Romola's marriage; 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.