She then matriculated at Girton College, Cambridge, in England[2] Runciman became active in public life after marriages and children.
In 1981, she was one of the founders of the Prison Reform Trust and was responsible for setting up a full-time Citizens' Advice Bureau in Wormwood Scrubs, the first full-time independent advice agency in any prison.
[4] She was Chair of Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust for more than ten years, retiring at the end of 2013.
[5] Between 1959 and 1962 she was married to Denis Mack Smith, a Cambridge historian of the Italian "Risorgimento".
Their son David, who then inherited the peerage, was until 2024 a professor of politics at the University of Cambridge.