For twenty five years, Madeleine was a journalist and Associate Editor on the Guardian and held a number of positions as reporter, leader writing and as a columnist 1999-2012. She wrote on a wide range of subjects including politics, social affairs, faith and global development. She organised a number of events and conferences including the Guardian’s Open Weekend festival in 2012; between 2012 and 2014 she was Editorial Director of Strategy.

She was made a Visiting Professor at the LSE's International Inequalities Institute in 2021. Her books have won several awards and listings for major prizes. Labours of Love was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing and longlisted for the Baillie Gifford. Love of Country was shortlisted for the Wainright and the Saltire Prizes in 2017. Her first novel, Island Song, won the Waverton Good Read Award in 2020 and in 2010 she won the Portico Prize for The Plot which was also shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize.

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 She held a visiting fellowship at Manchester University 2016-19 and received an honorary fellowship from Cardiff University in 2013. She was awarded a Lambeth MA degree in 2006, and her journalism was awarded the Commission for Racial Equality’s Race in the Media award in 2005 and the Imam wa Amal Special Award in 2002. She has won several One World Media awards for her journalism on global justice.

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She was born in the village of Oswaldkirk, North Yorkshire, one of five children of artist parents. She studied history at Corpus Christi, Cambridge and won a scholarship to Harvard. She now lives near Stroud, Gloucestershire with her family and a demanding vegetable garden. She is currently experimenting in printmaking and plans to learn to weave.