The Byzantine Life of Steven Runciman

Outlandish Knight

'An extraordinary book ... exceptionally fascinating, always readable and penetratingly intelligent' David Abulafia 
 
'As rich, funny and teemingly peopled as Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time ... Dinshaw writes with wit and elegance, and the most elegiac passages of Outlandish Knight evoke a lost society London and way of life' Ben Judah, Financial Times 
 
'This dazzling young writer is a mine of fascinating, memorable and totally useless information... I have been riveted by this book from start to finish, and leave the reader with one word of advice. Watch Minoo Dinshaw. He will go far' John Julius Norwich, Sunday Telegraph 
 
The biography of one of the greatest British historians - but also of a uniquely strange and various man 
 
In his enormously long life, Steven Runciman managed not just to be a great historian of the Crusades and Byzantium, but Grand Orator of the Orthodox Church, a member of the Order of Whirling Dervishes, Greek Astronomer Royal and Laird of Eigg. His friendships, curiosities and intrigues entangled him in a huge array of different artistic movements, civil wars, Cold War betrayals and, above all, the rediscovery of the history of the Eastern Mediterranean. He was as happy living in a remote part of the Inner Hebrides as in the heart of Istanbul. He was obsessed with historical truth, but also with tarot, second sight, ghosts and the uncanny. 
 
Outlandish Knight is a dazzling debut by a writer who has prodigious gifts, but who also has had the ability to spot one of the great biographical subjects. This is an extremely funny book about a man who attracted the strangest experiences, but also a very serious one. It is about the rigours of a life spent in the distant past, but also about the turbulent world of the twentieth century, where so much that Runciman studied and cherished would be destroyed.

Brilliantly entertaining ... Mr Dinshaw's choice of subject for his first book is an inspired one. He interweaves the strands of a long and variegated life with sympathy, elegance and awareness of the wider picture ... Mr Dinshaw has done Runciman proud. To whom will he turn his attention next?

Minoo Dinshaw's biography is itself a splendid mosaic, a careful and well-written account ... I wonder where Minoo Dinshaw goes from here. His is a splendid book, to be put at once onto the Wolfson Prize shortlist.

An astonishing feat of empathy as well as research ... What keeps the reader's interest on every page is, precisely, this biographer's sensitivity to atmosphere and his humorous awareness ... Near-omniscient thoroughness, gentle humour and psychological precision.

'An extraordinary book ... exceptionally fascinating, always readable and penetratingly intelligent account of one of Britain's most distinguished and colourful historians'

More than a biography; it is also a work of substantial literary criticism... This dazzling young writer is a mine of fascinating, memorable and totally useless information... I have been riveted by this book from start to finish, and leave the reader with one word of advice. Watch Minoo Dinshaw. He will go far

Casts fresh light on [Runciman's] sexuality and his adventures as a part-time spy.

This biography is both funny and erudite and empathetic but critical as it chronicles a fascinating caste of dangerously charming spies, poet-scholars, scheming Oxbridge academics, dashing majors and clever queens.

Dinshaw does a superb job in avoiding a chronological cradle-to-grave account of the life. Only towards the end of the book, for example, does he deal with Runciman's homosexuality, and his judgment here is perfectly balanced. The account of Runciman's old age (he died, aged 97, in 2000), playing the laird and host at his Borders tower Elshieshiels, couldn't be bettered. ... [Dinshaw] vividly brings alive this secretive, ludic man, making good his case that Runciman, like all the best historians, should be considered, first and foremost, as a writer

This obscure, ever-so-slightly discredited historian is an inspired choice of subject by Minoo Dinshaw. ... Dinshaw, rather than writing a crisp biography, has written a gigantic one, as rich, funny and teemingly peopled as Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time ... Dinshaw writes with wit and elegance, and the most elegiac passages of Outlandish Knight evoke a lost society London and way of life

A kaleidoscopic biography, studded with vivid portraits and entertaining footnotes. The writing is as elegant and as attentive to cadence as Runciman's ... Dinshaw has Runciman's talent for characterisation. ... Minoo has triumphed. He conjures up the worlds, works and harlequin career of Runciman with a magical touch of his own.

Minoo Dinshaw lives in London and Outlandish Knight is his first book.

In his enormously long life (he was born in 1903 and died in 2000), Steven Runciman managed not just to be a great historian of the Crusades and Byzantium, but Grand Orator of the Orthodox Church, a member of the Order of Whirling Dervishes, Greek Astronomer Royal and Laird of Eigg. His friendships, curiosities and plottings entangled him in a huge array of different artistic movements, civil wars, Cold War betrayals and, above all, the rediscovery of the history of the Eastern Mediterranean. He was as happy living in a remote part of the Inner Hebrides as in the heart of Istanbul. He was obsessed with historical truth, but also with tarot, second sight, ghosts and the uncanny. 
 
Outlandish Knight is a dazzling debut by a writer who has prodigious gifts, but who also has had the ability to spot one of the great biographical subjects. This is an extremely funny book about a man who attracted the strangest experiences, but also a very serious one: about the rigours of a life spent both in the distant past and in the harsh world of the twentieth century in which so much of what he studied and cherished across the Balkans and Asia Minor was subjected to rapid and often catastrophic change.

Minoo Dinshaw

Dinshaw’s Friends in Youth is an exceptionally accomplished work: unfailingly eloquent, impressively researched, original in form and shrewdly alert to the mendacities in his subjects’ own accounts of events. It provides a richly detailed depiction of the brittle, brilliant world of pre-Civil War England and the forces that blew it apart... Dinshaw’s telling of this story is a bravura performance in historical narration. He has a novelist’s eye for place and character, and his elegantly crafted prose is bright with freshly minted phrases.

An outstanding dual biography... Dinshaw’s book is profoundly entertaining, startling in its depth, and a necessary cautionary tale about the human cost of political division

Humane and sympathetic… Many accounts of the civil wars are military histories. Dinshaw’s is refreshingly different…. This is a story about young men, the years that formed them and the way that history, still, makes us choose sides

A zest for gossip; antiquarianism; a delight in networks and family trees and piquant coincidences; a penchant for trains of thought which, rather than travelling compulsively forward like a railway train, stray about like a mule-train of hungry animals released into a field full of clover: these are unusual attributes for a chronicler of great public events. They make Dinshaw an informative and engaging historian, and an extremely idiosyncratic one

Moving as well as erudite Friends in Youth builds an eloquent butelegiac portrait of well-meaning moderates who tried to halt the slide towards violent division.

The triumph of Friends in Youth is that it doesn’t conceive of itself as a joint biography of two important men set against a background of “History”. Instead, it is History that is front and centre... [Dinshaw finds] fascinating human interest stories among the large cast of minor characters

An elegant and humane work of considerable literary and historical polish… a book of 
engaging originality, covering one of the most traumatic and formative eras in British history

Choosing Sides in the English Civil War

At the Inns of Court, the intellectual, literary, and social heart of early 17th century London, many pivotal friendships were forged: few closer than that of Bulstrode Whitelocke and Edward (Ned) Hyde. Both young men were lively characters, industrious, well-connected, principled and optimistic. They dreamed of reforming the government of Charles I, a young court with age-old problems, by restoring the traditional harmony of Crown and Parliament. This is the story of how their hopes climbed, overreached, and fell into an abyss of relentless civil war. 
 
This highly original, vivid and engaging book recreates the atmosphere, drama, players and ideas of what is arguably England’s (and Britain’s) most crucial and traumatic formative period. Through the stories of his two protagonists, Minoo Dinshaw shows how subtle religious and political differences, careful personal judgments, and mere happenstance combined to place these two friends, most reluctantly, on opposite sides in the English Civil Wars. They would both survive, unlike many thousands of others, into old age; both would become influential historians, shaping how we still understand the conflicts of their age. But their friendship, like the once hopeful country in which it had first flourished, would be forever changed: permanently marred by what both men believed to be senseless and unnecessary civil strife.

Minoo Dinshaw

Books by Minoo Dinshaw

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