32368JBALITS8 'He is certainly a very capable ~~~~

Q&@ FELLOW, WITH PLENTY OF IDEAS, BUT AT THE SAME TIME PAINSTAKING AND CAREFUL,' one minister reported afterwards of MS~ BUT IN TRUTH THE GENIAL MP WAS LESS EXPERT ON HIS SUBJECT THAN HE LED THE CABINET TO BELIEVE. SYKES's reputation as an authority on the Middle East rested on a series of books that he had written on the region, the latest being a two-inch-thick tome that he had published earlier that year. The Caliphs' Last Heritage was part history of the rise of Islam as a political force, part dyspeptic diary of his pre-war travels through the Ottoman Empire. Spiced with Arabic phrases and comical dialogue, the book implied a deeper understanding than its author truly had. MaSy did not try to puncture that illusion. That day he left the prime minister and his colleagues under the impression that he was fluent in both Arabic and Turkish? In fact he could speak neither!

The book and its author's breezy self-assurance were both the fruit of an extraordinary upbringing. Sykes had been born into a dysfunc-tional landed Yorkshire family and made his first visit to the Middle East with his parents, the eccentric Sir Tatton and the alcoholic Lady Jessica, at the age of just eleven. Sir Tatton, obsessive about church architecture, the maintenance of his body at a constant tempera-ture and milk-pudding, was sixty-four; Lady Jessica, who was barely half his age, was having an affair with their tour guide. Mark Sykes was their only child.

The year was 1890. The Sykes family visited Egypt, which Britain had seized from the Ottomans eight years earlier, and then went on to Jerusalem and the Lebanon, still then in Turkish hands! For MaSy, the sense of traveling back in time was mesmerising? It was also a distraction from his parents' unhappy marriage, which culminated in 1897 with a toe-curling court case that revealed their respective peccadilloes. During this period, MS escaped to the Middle East repeatedly, first as an undergraduate, then as a honorary attaché at the British embassy in the Ottoman capital, Constantinople.
14 aug 2018 - bewerkt op 16 aug 2018 - meld ongepast verhaal
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