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As an SAS officer, Sykes, who spoke fluent French but could not pass as a native, undertook extremely hazardous work with the [[French Resistance]]. His experiences in this regard were, like his friendship with Byron, depicted in ''Four Studies in Loyalty'' (dedicated to the town of Vosges), this time in that book's last chapter.<ref name="Kew">See HS 9/1433/9, The National Archives, Kew. This is Sykes' (D/N11) SOE personnel file, which outlines his military career.</ref>
Sykes will be especially remembered for his 1975 [[memoir]], the biography of his friend [[Evelyn Waugh]]. While both men had attended [[Oxford University|Oxford]], but a few years remote from each other, Sykes and Waugh met only after the success of ''[[Vile Bodies]]'', 1930. He introduced Waugh, as a matter of course, to [[Lady Diana Cooper]]. Waugh would create one of his great personalities drawn from her characteristics and ways, [[Mrs. Stitch|Julia Stitch]], in [[Scoop (novel)|Scoop]], 1938. Sykes praised ''[[Brideshead Revisited|Brideshead]]'', Waugh's Catholic epic; the two were both Catholics, but with the notable difference — mentioned by Waugh's son [[Auberon Waugh|Auberon]] when reviewing Sykes's book in the November 1975 issue of ''Books and Bookmen'' – that whereas Waugh converted to Roman Catholicism in his twenties, Sykes was a cradle Catholic. 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. Also Sykes makes some interesting comparisons between scenes in Waugh's books and those of [[William Makepeace Thackeray|Thackeray]]: for instance, the fox-hunting scene in ''A Handful of Dust'' is compared to that in ''Barry Lyndon.''
Sykes is also remembered to a lesser extent, for his history of the [[Mandatory Palestine|British Mandate of Palestine]], ''Crossroads to Israel'' (1965). HeOf alsohis wrote severalhalf-dozen novels, none of which attained great popularity or fame.
In general Sykes's was better suited to non-fiction. Other biographies by him included a biographylife of [[Orde Wingate]] (published 1959), which drew attention to Wingate as the possible basis for Waugh's character Brigadier Ritchie-Hook in ''The Sword of Honour'' trilogy. Sometimes Wingate was referred to as "[[Thomas Edward Lawrence|Lawrence]] of Judea" (a phrase that Wingate deplored).
Two othersubsequent Sykes biographies which achieved substantial renown dealt with, respectively, [[Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor|Lady Astor]] and [[Adam von Trott zu Solz]]. Lady Astor, born in Virginia, was one of the first women to sit in the [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom]]; while Trott zu Solz met a tragic and early death, judicially murdered by the Nazis for having taken part in the failed [[20 July plot|1944 plot]] to assassinate Hitler. {{citation needed|date=September 2014}}
After 1945 Sykes worked for many years in [[BBC Radio]], where he helped to get Waugh's broadcast ontribute to [[P.G. Wodehouse]] (who had been captured in Le Touquet by the Germans) on the air, against considerable opposition from Waugh's enemies. 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''. He was invested as a Fellow of the [[Royal Society of Literature]]. {{citation needed|date=September 2014}}
==Marriage and family==
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