Christopher Sykes

Author

1907 – 1986

15

Who was Christopher Sykes?

Christopher Hugh Sykes FRSL was an English author. Born into a well-off north-of-England landowning family, he was the second son of the diplomat Sir Mark Sykes. His uncle, also Christopher Sykes, was, for a time, a close friend of Edward VII.

Educated at Downside School and the University of Oxford, Sykes was, for a time in his youth, in the Foreign Office, including a stint as an attaché in the British Embassy in Berlin, where Harold Nicolson was then Counsellor. This was followed by a year at the British Legation in Teheran. An early hero was Aubrey Herbert, remembered now as the man who inspired John Buchan's classic thriller, Greenmantle.

Though Sykes thought of making politics his career, his stammer and also his artistic and imaginative disposition indicated that political life was not for him. At the School of Oriental Studies in London, he devoted himself to Persian studies in 1933 before travelling in Central Asia during 1933-34 with Robert Byron, who later wrote The Road to Oxiana recounting their long expedition in what was then an almost unexplored country.

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Born
Nov 17, 1907
Children
Died
Dec 8, 1986

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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"Christopher Sykes." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Mar. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/biography/christopher-sykes/m/026vhh0>.

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