 Journalists Laura Flanders and Stephanie Flanders, and actress Olivia Wilde are her half-nieces.She graduated in Classics from the University of Aberdeen, and read Law at St Anne's College, University of Oxford.She was one of the first two female students to be invited to speak at the Oxford Union, after her friends Jenny Grove and Rose Dugdale had dressed up in men's clothes to gain entrance to the male-only debating chamber and had subsequently canvassed support for female students to be admitted.