54 Facts About Mark Sykes

Colonel Sir Tatton Benvenuto Mark Sykes, 6th Baronet was an English traveller, Conservative Party politician, and diplomatic advisor, particularly with regard to the Middle East at the time of the First World War.

Several accounts suggest that his future mother-in-law essentially trapped Sir Tatton Sykes into marrying Christina.

Lady Sykes lived in London, and Mark divided his time between her home and his father's 34,000 acre East Riding of Yorkshire estates.

Lady Sykes converted to Roman Catholicism and Mark was brought into that faith from the age of three.

Mark Sykes was left much to his own devices and developed an imagination, without the corresponding self-discipline to make him a good scholar.

Mark Sykes was educated at the Jesuit Beaumont College and Jesus College, Cambridge.

Mark Sykes did not finish a degree, unlike his rival T E Lawrence, who graduated from Jesus College, Oxford.

Mark Sykes wrote The Caliphs' Last Heritage: A Short History of the Turkish Empire, the first half of which is a brief overview of political geography of the Middle East up to the Ottoman Empire while the second half is an account of the author's travels in Asia Minor and the Middle East between 1906 and 1913.

Mark Sykes bubbled with ideas, and he swept up his listeners with his enthusiasm.

Mark Sykes had vitality beyond any man I have ever met.

Heir to vast Yorkshire estates and a baronetcy, Mark Sykes was not content to await his inheritance.

Mark Sykes was sent abroad with the 5th Battalion of the Green Howards during the Second Boer War for two years, where he was engaged mostly in guard duty, but saw action on several occasions.

Mark Sykes made a friend of the Prime Minister, who went on to serve as Foreign Secretary during the First World War, when Sykes worked closely with him.

Mark Sykes was very much a Yorkshire grandee, with his country seat at Sledmere House, breeding racehorses, sitting on the bench, raising and commanding a militia unit, serving as Honorary Colonel of the 1st Volunteer Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment, and fulfilling his social obligations.

Mark Sykes married Edith Gorst, a Roman Catholic, daughter of the Conservative party manager, Eldon Gorst.

Mark Sykes succeeded to the baronetcy and the estates in 1913.

Lady Mark Sykes went on to found a VAD Hospital in Hull during the First World War.

Mark Sykes became close to Lord Hugh Cecil, another MP and was a contemporary of F E Smith, later Lord Birkenhead, and Hilaire Belloc.

Mark Sykes was a friend of Aubrey Herbert, another Englishman influential in Middle Eastern affairs, and was acquainted with Gertrude Bell, the pro-Arab Foreign Office advisor and Middle Eastern traveller.

Mark Sykes soon became the dominant person on the committee, and so garnering great influence on British Middle Eastern policy, later becoming a prominent expert.

Mark Sykes was introduced to Colonel Oswald FitzGerald, Kitchener's assistant secretary.

Mark Sykes designed the flag of the Arab Revolt, a combination of green, red, black and white.

Mark Sykes had long agreed with the traditional policy of British Conservatives in propping up Ottoman Turkey as a buffer against Russian expansion into the Mediterranean.

Mark Sykes set off from London on a journey of six months' duration overland across Europe to Bulgaria.

Mark Sykes stopped at Sofia, and thence took ship to the British HQ in the Dardanelles.

Mark Sykes was debriefed by the Arab Bureau at Cairo HQ.

Mark Sykes's ideas were of the outside; and he lacked patience to test his materials before choosing the style of building.

Mark Sykes remained a purist who shunned democratic progress, instead vesting his energy in an indomitable Arab Spirit.

Mark Sykes was a champion of the Levantine tradition, of a mercantile trading empire, finding the progressive modernisation in the West totally unsuited to the desert kingdoms.

Late morning 16 December 1915 Sir Mark Sykes arrived at Downing street for a meeting to advise Prime Minister Asquith on the situation with the Ottoman Empire.

Mark Sykes brought a map and a three-page document on his thoughts of middle eastern policy.

In Caliph's Last Heritage Mark Sykes was appalled by the filth and squalor of Aleppo and Damascus.

Whilst he praised the French for inventing the set square for the illiterate Arab, he glossed over the German contribution to building railways that enabled Arabs to travel; Mark Sykes stressed the negative aspects of social squalor.

Mark Sykes underestimated the Turks but W Crooke's review surmised that the facts he collected would be helpful to resolve the Eastern Question.

Across Whitehall, Mark Sykes became known as "the Mad Mullah", even so he was summoned to No 10, as rumours spread he was to become a Joint Cabinet secretary.

Mark Sykes proposed that the issue of Syria be settled as quickly as possible with France.

Mark Sykes alerted Hankey, the Cabinet Secretary, to General Maurice's agitation against the Prime Minister and Haig, as well as criticizing the King's part in the war.

Evidence suggests that Mark Sykes had a hand in promoting the Balfour Declaration to the Cabinet issued on 2 November 1917.

Mark Sykes believed that the Bolsheviks were mostly Jewish, and the best way of keeping Russia in the war was for Britain to make a pro-Jewish gesture.

Mark Sykes told Hankey the General Staff had expected him to be in Gaza by Christmas and not Damascus.

Mark Sykes had begun to change his views on Zionism in late 1918.

Mark Sykes was in Paris in connection with peace negotiations in 1919.

Mark Sykes died in his room at the Hotel Le Lotti near the Tuileries Garden on 16 February 1919, aged 39, a victim of the Spanish flu pandemic.

Mark Sykes's remains were transported back to his family home at Sledmere House for burial.

Mark Sykes was succeeded by his son, Sir Richard Sykes, 7th Baronet.

One of Sir Mark Sykes's daughters, Angela, Countess of Antrim, was a sculptor and writer who was married to The 8th Earl of Antrim.

Mark Sykes received during his service no British honours but he was made a Commander of the Order of St Stanislas by Tsarist Russia and held the Order of the Star of Romania.

In 2007,88 years after Sir Mark Sykes died, all the living descendants gave their permission to exhume his body for scientific investigation headed by virologist John Oxford.

Mark Sykes's remains were of interest because he had been buried in a lead-lined coffin, and this was thought likely to have preserved Spanish flu viral particles intact.

Mark Sykes is a major feature in Balfour to Blair, a documentary about the history of British involvement in the Middle East.

The Sledmere Cross takes the form of an Eleanor Cross and is a true folly that Sir Mark Sykes converted into a war memorial in 1919.

Mark Sykes added a series of brass portraits in commemoration of his friends and the local men who fell in the war.

Mark Sykes added a brass portrait himself in crusader armour with the inscription Laetare Jerusalem.

Mark Sykes designed the Wagoners' Memorial to the men of the Wagoners Special Reserve, a Territorial Army unit that he raised in 1912, composed of farm labourers and tenant farmers from across the Yorkshire Wolds intended for war service as drivers of horse-drawn wagons.