‘I pray I shall not find a biographer,’ said Steven Runciman, eminent historian of Byzantium and the Crusades, Grand Orator to the Patriarch of Constantinople, Astrologer Royal to King George II of the Hellenes, Laird of Eigg, screaming queen, howling snob and honorary whirling dervish. His prayer has been denied, but he could not have found a better biographer than Minoo Dinshaw, whose Outlandish Knight (Allen Lane, £30) is monumentally impressive: scholarly, witty and gorgeously written.
When Runciman was in charge of the British Council in Athens after the war he dismissed Patrick Leigh Fermor from the only job he ever had, having tired of ‘Paddy’s little irregularities’, such as drinking too much and not paying his debts. Paddy took it badly at the time but later forgave him, as he had a generous and sunny spirit, which irradiates Adam Sisman’s selection of his letters, Dashing for the Post (John Murray, £30), a feast of adventure, gossip and flirtation.
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