Editing Steven Runciman (section)

==Biography==
Born in [[Northumberland]], he was the second son of [[Walter Runciman, 1st Viscount Runciman of Doxford|Walter]] and [[Hilda Runciman]].<ref name=":0">{{Cite news |date=2000-11-02 |title=Sir Steven Runciman obituary |page=25 |work=[[The Times]] |issn=0140-0460 |language=en}}</ref> His parents were members of the [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberal Party]] and the first married couple to sit simultaneously in Parliament.<ref name="lrb2016">{{Cite news |last=Hill |first=Rosemary |author-link=Rosemary Hill |date=2016-10-20 |title=Herberts & Herbertinas |work=[[London Review of Books]] |url=http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n20/rosemary-hill/herberts-and-herbertinas |url-status=live |url-access=subscription |access-date=2016-10-22 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220106015032/https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v38/n20/rosemary-hill/herberts-herbertinas |archive-date=2022-01-06 |issn=0260-9592 |language=en}}</ref> His father was created [[Viscount Runciman of Doxford]] in 1937. His paternal grandfather, [[Walter Runciman, 1st Baron Runciman]], was a shipping magnate.<ref name="lrb2016"/> He was named after his maternal grandfather, [[James Cochran Stevenson]], the MP for [[South Shields (UK Parliament constituency)|South Shields]].

===Eton and Cambridge===
Runciman said that he started reading Greek at the age of seven or eight.<ref name="Panto">{{Cite web |title=The Last interview with the Great Byzantologist Sir Steven Runciman |url=https://www.impantokratoros.gr/B8BE43F5.en.aspx |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220106013529/https://www.impantokratoros.gr/B8BE43F5.en.aspx |archive-date=2022-01-06 |access-date=2017-04-10 |website=[[Pantokratoros Monastery]] |language=en |issue=4}}</ref> Later he came to be able to make use of sources in other languages as well: Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Hebrew, [[Syriac language|Syriac]], [[Armenian language|Armenian]] and Georgian.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The library of Sir Steven Runciman |url=https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~itsnew/newsletter/2005/05/runciman.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170411060035/https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~itsnew/newsletter/2005/05/runciman.html |archive-date=2017-04-11 |publisher=[[University of St Andrews]] |language=en |format=text.article |accessdate=2017-04-10}}</ref> A [[King's Scholar]] at [[Eton College]], he was an exact contemporary and close friend of [[George Orwell]].<ref name="lrb2016"/><ref name=":0"/> While there, they both studied French under [[Aldous Huxley]].{{citation needed|date=May 2023}}

In 1921 he entered [[Trinity College, Cambridge]], as a history scholar and studied under [[J. B. Bury]], becoming, as Runciman later said, falsely, "his first, and only, student".<ref name="lrb2016"/> At first the reclusive Bury tried to brush him off; then, when Runciman mentioned that he could read [[Russian language|Russian]], Bury gave him a stack of [[Bulgarian language|Bulgarian]] articles to edit, and so their relationship began. His work on the [[Byzantine Empire]] earned him a fellowship at Trinity in 1927.<ref name=":0"/>

===Work as a historian===
After receiving a large inheritance from his grandfather, Runciman resigned his fellowship in 1938 and began travelling widely. Thus, for much of his life he was an independent scholar, living on private means.<ref name="lrb2016"/> He went on to be a press attaché at the British Legation in the Bulgarian capital, [[Sofia]], in 1940 and at the British Embassy in [[Cairo]] in 1941. From 1942 to 1945 he was Professor of Byzantine Art and History<ref name="lrb2016"/> at [[Istanbul University]], in [[Turkey]], where he began the research on the Crusades which would lead to his best known work, the ''History of the Crusades'' (three volumes appearing in 1951, 1952 and 1954). From 1945 to 1947 he was a representative in Athens of the [[British Council]].<ref name=":0"/><ref name="lrb2016"/>

Most of Runciman's historical works deal with Byzantium and her medieval neighbours between Sicily and Syria; one exception is ''The White Rajahs'', published in 1960, which tells the story of [[Raj of Sarawak|Sarawak]], an independent state founded on the northern coast of [[Borneo]] in 1841 by [[James Brooke]], and ruled by the Brooke family for more than a century.

[[Jonathan Riley-Smith]], one of the leading historians of the Crusades,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Peters |first=Damien |url={{GBurl|3EorDwAAQBAJ|pg=PT66}} |title=The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading |publisher=[[Taylor & Francis]] |year=2017 |isbn=9781351353106 |page=66 }}</ref> denounced Runciman for his perspective on the Crusades.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Crusade Myths |url=http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2005/tmadden_crusademyths_feb05.asp |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220106013513/http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2005/tmadden_crusademyths_feb05.asp |archive-date=2022-01-06 |access-date=2016-01-03 |publisher=Ignatius Insight |language=en}}</ref> Riley-Smith had been told by Runciman during an on-camera interview that he [Runciman] considered himself "not a historian, but a writer of literature."{{sfn|Andrea| Holt|2015|p=xxii}}

According to [[Christopher Tyerman]], Professor of the History of the Crusades at [[Hertford College, Oxford]],<ref>{{Cite web |last=Hertford College, University of Oxford |title=Professor Christopher J. Tyerman |url=https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-christopher-j-tyerman?}}</ref> Runciman created a work that "across the [[English-speaking world|Anglophone world]] continues as a base reference for popular attitudes, evident in print, film, television and on the internet."{{sfn|Andrea|Holt|2015|p=xxiii}}

===Interest in occult===
In his personal life, Runciman was an old-fashioned English eccentric{{explain|date=July 2024}}, known as an [[Aestheticism|æsthete]], raconteur and enthusiast of the occult. According to Andrew Robinson, a history teacher at Eton, "he played piano duets with the [[Puyi|last Emperor of China]], told tarot cards for [[Fuad I of Egypt|King Fuad of Egypt]], narrowly missed being blown up by the Germans in the [[Pera Palace Hotel]] in Istanbul and twice hit the jackpot on slot machines in Las Vegas".

A story from his time at Eton of an incident with a then-friend, Eric Blair, who later became famous writing as [[George Orwell]], is told in [[Gordon Bowker (writer)|Gordon Bowker]]'s biography of Orwell: "Drawing from new correspondence with Steven Runciman, one of Orwell's friends at Eton (which he attended from 1917 to 1921), Bowker reveals the (perhaps surprising) fascination of Blair with the occult. A senior boy, Phillip Yorke, had attracted the disfavour of both Blair and Runciman so they planned a revenge. As Runciman recalled, they fashioned an image of Yorke from candle wax and broke off a leg. To their horror, shortly afterwards, Yorke not only broke his leg but in July died of leukaemia. The story of what happened soon spread and, in somewhat garbled form, became legend. Blair and Runciman suddenly found themselves regarded as distinctly odd, and to be treated warily".<ref name="Bowker">{{Cite book |last=Bowker |first=Gordon |url={{GBurl|Ij49NQAACAAJ|p=56}} |title=George Orwell |date=2004 |publisher=[[Little, Brown Book Group|Little, Brown]] |isbn=978-0-349-11551-1 |page=56 |author-link=Gordon Bowker (writer) |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Keeble |first=Richard Lance |date=2019-01-26 |title=Gordon Bowker |url=https://orwellsociety.com/gordon-bowker/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220303050128/https://orwellsociety.com/gordon-bowker/ |archive-date=2022-03-03 |publisher=The Orwell Society |language=en |accessdate=2022-03-03}}</ref>

===Homosexuality===
Runciman was [[homosexual]].<ref name="Dinshaw">{{Cite book |last=Dinshaw |first=Minoo |url={{GBurl|vh5WMQAACAAJ}} |title=Outlandish Knight: The Byzantine Life of Steven Runciman |date=2017 |publisher=[[Penguin Group|Penguin Books, Limited]] |isbn=978-0-14-197947-2 |language=en}}</ref> There is little evidence of a long-term lover, but Runciman boasted of a number of casual sexual encounters, and told a friend in later life: "I have the temperament of a [[harlot]], and so am free of emotional complications." Nevertheless, Runciman was discreet about his homosexuality, partly perhaps because of religious feelings that homosexuality was "an inarguable offence against God". Runciman also felt that his sexuality had potentially held back his career. [[Max Mallowan]] related a conversation in which Runciman told him "that he felt his life had been a failure because of his gayness".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Malcolm |first=Noel |author-link=Noel Malcolm |date=2016-10-05 |title="I have the temperament of a harlot": on the life of Steven Runciman |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/poetry/2016/10/i-have-temperament-harlot-life-steven-runciman |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220106013508/https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/poetry/2016/10/i-have-temperament-harlot-life-steven-runciman |archive-date=2022-01-06 |access-date=2019-02-07 |website=[[New Statesman]] |language=en}}</ref>

===Death===
He died in [[Radway]], Warwickshire, while visiting relatives, aged 97.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Pace |first=Eric |date=2000-11-03 |title=Sir Steven Runciman, 97, British Historian and Author |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/03/nyregion/sir-steven-runciman-97-british-historian-and-author.html |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220106013514/https://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/03/nyregion/sir-steven-runciman-97-british-historian-and-author.html |archive-date=2022-01-06 |access-date=2016-07-10 |website=The New York Times |language=en}}</ref> He never married.<ref name="Panto"/><ref name="guardianobit">{{Cite web |last=Clive |first=Nigel |date=2000-11-02 |title=Obituary: Sir Steven Runciman, Historian whose magisterial works transformed our understanding of Byzantium, the medieval church and the crusades |url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/nov/03/guardianobituaries.books |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220107035341/https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/nov/03/guardianobituaries.books |archive-date=2022-01-07 |access-date=2014-09-11 |website=The Guardian |language=en}}</ref>