Steven Runciman; Leading Scholar of the Crusades, Byzantine Empire

Steven Runciman, 97, British scholar considered the leading authority on the history of the Byzantine Empire and the Crusades. Runciman was the author of “A History of the Crusades,” a three-volume work published between 1951 and 1954 that is considered the best history of the Crusades written in English. His research took him to remote corners of the world in an effort to add Muslim, Greek and Armenian viewpoints to expand on the popular Western view of the crusaders as heroes battling barbarians for control of the Holy Land. In the late 1950s he went to the North Borneo state of Sarawak to research “The White Rajahs,” a 1960 work about the English family that ruled there before it became part of Malaysia. Runciman was a son of privilege whose parents both served as Liberal members of Parliament and were the first married couple to sit together in the House of Commons. His father, Walter, was a Cabinet minister and diplomat. Steven learned French, Latin and Greek by the age of 6 and Russian at 11. He was a King’s scholar at Eton and won a scholarship to Trinity College in Cambridge. He served in diplomatic and government information posts in Cairo, Palestine and Greece before immersing himself in the academic world as a lecturer and medieval historian. Four queens were said to have turned out for his 80th birthday party. He celebrated his 90th birthday in 1993 with a huge cake in the shape of Istanbul’s 6th century basilica, the Hagia Sophia, and with guests such as Princess Margaret and the former King Constantine of Greece. On Wednesday in Warwickshire, England.