Editing Steven Runciman (section)

===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>