English historian Steven Runciman was BOTD in 1903. Born in Northumberland to a prominent political family, his father was created Viscount Runciman in 1937. A gifted scholar from childhood, he began reading Greek aged seven. He was educated at Eton College, where he befriended Eric Blair (latterly George Orwell) and was taught by Aldous Huxley. He studied history at Cambridge University, eventually becoming a fellow of Trinity College in 1927. After inheriting his family fortune in 1938, he resigned from Trinity and travelled through Europe, working as a press attaché at British Legations in Bulgaria and Egypt during World War Two. He settled in Turkey in 1942 where he became professor of Byzantine art at history at Istanbul University. He is best known for his three-volume study A History of the Crusades, published between 1951 and 1954. Using primary sources in Greek, Latin, Armenian and Arabic, Runciman dispelled romantic myths of the Crusades as an heroic or chivalrous enterprise, arguing that the Crusaders were “barbarians” intent on invading and colonising the Islamic world. Widely acclaimed on its release, it became a standard text in English-speaking academia. Discreetly gay, he appears to have had no long-term relationships, though privately boasted of a number of casual sexual encounters, stating “I have the temperament of a harlot, and so am free of emotional complications.” Knighted in 1958, he was appointed a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1984. He died in 2000, aged 97.

Widely acclaimed,