Crossroads to Israel

Christopher Sykes

Μαΐ 2022 · Plunkett Lake Press

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“Christopher Sykes has written the authoritative work on the Palestine Mandate... His account is almost unbearably fair to all concerned, even to Britain... a very excellent book. Mr. Sykes steers his way through the reigns of successive High Commissioners and through the maze of White Papers and Royal Commissions with amazing virtuosity. We see the whole picture of the Mandate in a way which was impossible to those at the time.” — International Affairs

“Mr. Sykes (son of Mark Sykes, co-author of the Sykes-Picot Agreement) has written an illuminating, highly-informed and balanced study of the development of the Zionist movement into the State of Israel. By virtue of his acquaintance with many of the leading persons involved, Mr. Sykes has had access to a considerable amount of unpublished material upon which he has drawn heavily to clarify much that was previously obscure about events in the unhappy Holy Land. He also writes with an easy, lucid style so that apart from the book’s intrinsic merit it is immensely readable.” — International Journal

“One of the many merits of Mr Sykes’s wholly meritorious book is that he is not anchored in time or prejudice.” — Middle Eastern Studies

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Christopher Hugh Sykes (1907-1986), second son of diplomat Sir Mark Sykes, was educated at Downside School, Christ Church, Oxford and the Sorbonne in Paris. He spent time in the Foreign Office, as an attaché in the British Embassy in Berlin (1928-29) and at the British Legation in Tehran (1930-31). He attended the School of Oriental Studies in London in Persian studies (1933).

Sykes then travelled to Persia and Afghanistan (1933-34), then an almost unexplored area. Back in the UK, Sykes wrote a biography of the German Persianist Wilhelm Wassmus (1936). He was commissioned in 1939 as a reserve officer in the Green Howards regiment’s 7th Battalion. In June 1940, Sykes joined SO1 (later Special Operations Executive). In October 1941, he went to Tehran as Deputy Director of Special Propaganda under diplomatic cover after the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran; in November 1942, he transferred to Cairo, where he wrote a light novel, High Minded Murder. Back in the UK in May 1943, he volunteered for the Special Air Service (SAS) and undertook very dangerous work with the French Resistance. His experiences were depicted in Four Studies in Loyalty.

After 1945 Sykes worked for many years in BBC Radio. He wrote frequently for British and American periodicals, including The New Republic, The Spectator, Books and Bookmen, The Observer and the English Review Magazine.

Sykes’ many books include biographies of Orde Wingate (1959), his friend Evelyn Waugh (1975), Lady Astor, Adam von Trott zu Solz, a history of the British Mandate of Palestine, Crossroads to Israel (1965) and several novels.