Jonathan Riley-Smith is one of the country’s leading historians of the Crusades. Like other scholars in the field, he has had to face up to the question of how one follows a popular and influential historian like Runciman. Modern historians of the Crusades have looked in greater depth than was fashionable in Runciman’s day at angles like the economics of Crusade or at Crusading beyond the Middle East; however modern historians have a duty to tell the story of the events just as much as Runciman did.

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