South African solicitor and Communist, was born on 29 June 1873 in London. He was the second of four children of prominent Nonconformists Percy Bunting and Mary Hyett Lidgett Bunting and the great grandson of Dr. Jabez Bunting, the foremost figure of early nineteenth-century Wesleyan Methodism. Bunting’s father, a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn, edited the prestigious Contemporary Review and was a leading figure in the Liberal Party; his mother was a social activist on behalf of working-class girls and women. The Buntings hosted frequent overseas visitors representing various social and political causes. Bunting internalized the ideals of moral rectitude and service to others imbued in him by his parents, and carried them with him throughout his life.
Intelligent and musically gifted, Bunting excelled in classics, winning scholarships to University College School and St. Paul’s School. In 1892 he entered Magdalen College Oxford as a classics demy scholarship student In ...
