Outlandish Knight: The Byzantine Life of Steven Runciman

This biography is alarmingly good for a first effort. I've been reading Runciman's excellent books for the past 50 years, and about him here and there in the memoirs of people he knew. It was thus of huge interest to learn so much more about the man and his character. Dinshaw has rounded up a huge amount of information (and seems to know more than is good for him about the English homintern and its satellites), and leaves no detail aside. The result is that Runciman is revealed, over a great many pages, as a fascinating and not particularly likeable individual. He lived to be 97 with the first half of his life full of interest and his whole adult life writing extremely good books. An excellent read.

This is a dense, absorbing and thoroughly enjoyable biography of a man who lived a long and productive life. Its sheer verve is infectious and it is stuffed full of anecdotes and vignettes. Its depth is stunning and the sense of time and place is effectively invoked and there are encounters with many of his friends , prominent and relatively unknown.I suspect the subject would not have been an easy man to know but for sheer longevity and scholarship is worthy of study.This is simply one of the most pleasurable reads I have had in a long time.

An interesting biography of a fascinating man. Perhaps too easy to get lost along the vast gallery of people. Still, well worth reading, notably for fans of Steven Runciman's works.

strange man

Bought for son so cannot comment on it.

Excellent, comprehensive and intelligently-written debut biography of an eminent Byzantinologist. Reads like a history of the 20th century

A good book about the outstanding historian

Christmas gift

This was a gift for my brother-in-law and he was happy to receive it

Excellently written and amusing biography of a most unexpected personality (for a historian of his time). Mr Dinshaw writes with elegance and expressive style, with an authority and erudition that surprises and pleases at every turn.

This is a long and almost-too-sumptuously detailed biography of a rather interesting man, the Byzantinist Steven Runciman. In my view, it might have benefitted from some trimming. Fundamentally, the problem is that Runciman is not an easy man to get inside the head of, and, other than the fact that he managed to write a popularly successful narrative history of the Crusades, Runciman is a man whose achievements in life are likely to be of interest mostly to those who savor the life stories of grandee-scholars. I thought the issues of "How good is his history?" and "What have other Byzantinists had to say about it since?" could have been handled in a more detailed but also more focused manner. Having said that, this is well worth reading and contains a great deal of information. In tone, it is neither adulatory nor snarky nor sensationalist -- kudos to Mr. Dinshaw for avoiding those all too frequent pitfalls.