His health, however, then as later, was delicate and many of his Eton days were spent at home which, given his taste for reading, learning languages and, above all, history, he put to good use. It was not surprising, therefore, that he won a scholarship at Eton where his life-long capacity for friendship quickly manifested itself – his friends including ‘Puffin’ Asquith to whose father, then Prime Minister, he owed an invitation to stay at No. His high intelligence manifested itself at a very early stage in his life, starting to learn French at the age of three, Latin and Greek at seven and Russian at eleven.
Steven’s grandfather, also a Walter Runciman, founded the successful Runciman shipping business. Sir Steven Runciman, who died aged 97 on November 1 last year, was a man of many parts: an eminent scholar and historian, responsible in no small measure for the revival in the 20th century of our western interest in Byzantine history and art, a leading authority on the Crusades, a traveller and lecturer world-wide and, above all, a fascinating if somewhat mysterious personality with an address book second to none of his many friends across the globe, containing as it did an A to Z of the world’s royal, distinguished and influential families.īorn in July 1903, he was the second son of a leading Liberal MP, Walter Runciman, later 1st Viscount Runciman of Doxford, who with his wife, born Hilda Stevenson, were the first married couple to sit together in the House of Commons and who was a member of Asquith’s Cabinet in the First World War. He published the following tribute to Sir Steven in The Anglo-Hellenic Review in 2001: It was he who, as Chairman of the Anglo-Hellenic League, instituted the Runciman Award which was first awarded in 1986. George Jellicoe (Earl Jellicoe, son of Admiral Jellicoe of Jutland fame) was a close friend of Steven Runciman. The Hon Sir Steven Runciman CH FBA 1903-2000įaced by the mountainous heap of the minutiae of knowledge and awed by the watchful severity of his colleagues, the modern historian too often takes refuge in learned articles or narrowly specialized dissertations, small fortresses that are easy to defend from attack.
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