1. Steven Runciman's works had a profound impact on the popular conception of the Crusades.
12 Facts About Steven Runciman
1. 2.
Steven Runciman's parents were members of the Liberal Party and the first married couple to sit simultaneously in Parliament.
3.
Steven Runciman's father was created Viscount Runciman of Doxford in 1937.
4.
Steven Runciman's paternal grandfather, Walter Runciman, 1st Baron Runciman, was a shipping magnate.
5.
Steven Runciman was named after his maternal grandfather, James Cochran Stevenson, the MP for South Shields.
6.
Steven Runciman said that he started reading Greek at the age of seven or eight.
7.
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".
8.
At first the reclusive Bury tried to brush him off; then, when Steven Runciman mentioned that he could read Russian, Bury gave him a stack of Bulgarian articles to edit, and so their relationship began.
9.
Steven Runciman went on to be a press attache at the British Legation in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, in 1940 and at the British Embassy in Cairo in 1941.
10.
Max Mallowan related a conversation in which Steven Runciman told him "that he felt his life had been a failure because of his gayness".
11.
Steven Runciman died in Radway, Warwickshire, while visiting relatives, aged 97.
12.
The picture of the crusades that Steven Runciman painted owed much to current scholarship yet much more to Sir Walter Scott.