Les Carlyon


Leslie Allen Carlyon was an Australian writer and newspaper editor, who was born in Elmore, Victoria in 1942.

Early life

He was editor of Melbourne's The Age, as well as editor-in-chief of The Herald, and twice won the Walkley Award for journalism. In 1993 he won the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year Award.
His book Gallipoli, a popular history of the Allied Gallipoli campaign in the Dardanelles during the First World War, was published in 2001, and met with critical and commercial success in Australia, New Zealand and England. The book was the basis for the Australian 2015 TV miniseries Gallipoli, released in the year of the 100th anniversary of the campaign.
Carlyon's The Great War, published in 2006, is the story of Australian forces on the Western Front in France and Belgium also during World War I.
In the 2014 Queen's Birthday Honours List, Carlyon was invested as a Companion of the Order of Australia, for "eminent service to literature through the promotion of the national identity as an author, editor and journalist, to the understanding and appreciation of Australia's war history, and to the horseracing industry".
Carlyon died, aged 76, on 4 March 2019.

Awards