Mark Sykes

Belfast, County Antrim, Ireland, did not birth Mark Sykes, but that false claim still circles the internet like a ghost. He entered the world in Westminster, London, on 16 March 1879, the only child of a wealthy bachelor and a much younger woman. His father later disavowed her debts, leaving Mark to divide his years between a London home and a vast Yorkshire estate. That fractured childhood may have shaped the man who later helped redraw the Middle East.