Daughter of Frederick Baynes and Jessie (née Cunningham), Pauline Baynes was born on the 9th of September 1922 , in Hove. She spent her early years in Agra, India, where her father was a commissioner in the Indian Civil Service. When she was five, her mother took her and her sister Angela to England, to attend school. She spent the next few years unhappy at a convent school, where the nuns made fun of her active imagination and her ability to speak Hindi. After this, she attended the Beaufront girls' boarding school, Camberley. When she was 15, she spent two terms at the Farnham School of Art before moving on to the Slade, and then to Oxford.