Mark Sykes - The Boer War, Travels and Parliament

The Boer War, Travels and Parliament

Heir to vast Yorkshire estates and a baronetcy, Sykes was not content to await his inheritance. He served in the Second Boer War for two years, where he was engaged mostly in guard duty, but saw action on several occasions. He travelled extensively, especially in the Middle East.

From 1904 to 1905 he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Chief Secretary for Ireland, George Wyndham. Later he served as honorary attaché to the British Embassy in Constantinople.

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 and fulfilling his social obligations. He married Edith Gorst, also a Roman Catholic. It was a happy union, and they had six children. Sykes succeeded to the baronetcy and the estates in 1913.

In 1912, Sykes was elected as Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Hull Central, after two close, but unsuccessful, tries in another constituency. He became close to Lord Hugh Cecil, another MP and was a contemporary of the volatile F. E. Smith, later Lord Birkenhead, and Hilaire Belloc, a naturalised British citizen from France.

Sykes was also 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. Sykes was never as single-minded an advocate of the Arab cause as Bell, and her friends T. E. Lawrence and Sir Percy Cox. His sympathies and interests later extended to Armenians, Arabs and Jews, as well as Turks. This is reflected in the Turkish Room he had installed in Sledmere House, using a noted Armenian artist as designer.