[1] Educated at Downside School and Christ Church, Oxford, Sykes was, for a time in his youth, in the Foreign Office, including a stint as an attaché (1928–29) in the British Embassy in Berlin, where Harold Nicolson was then Counsellor.
[citation needed] Though Sykes contemplated making politics his career, he thought that his stammer and also his artistic and imaginative disposition would tell against his success in parliamentary life.
During October 1941, Sykes was sent out to Tehran as Deputy Director of Special Propaganda under diplomatic cover (Second Secretary at the British Legation) in the aftermath of the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran, where he remained until November 1942, when he was transferred to Cairo.
Meanwhile, after failing to find any position as an intelligence officer in the Middle East, Sykes returned to the UK in May 1943, volunteered for the Special Air Service (SAS), and was posted to the Commando Training Depot at Achnacarry Castle, Invernesshire on 1 July 1943.
Sykes nonetheless censured some of Waugh's writing, and admitted to a dislike of the character of Julia Flyte, noting that nobody had yet identified a model for her in contemporary society.
[citation needed] Two subsequent Sykes biographies which achieved substantial renown dealt with, respectively, Lady Astor and Adam von Trott zu Solz.
Frequently Sykes wrote for several British and American periodicals, including The New Republic, The Spectator, Books and Bookmen, The Observer and the short-lived English Review Magazine.
[citation needed] He married Camilla Georgiana, daughter of Sir Thomas Wentworth Russell (great-grandson of the 6th Duke of Bedford) on 25 October 1936.