Carlyon, Les 1942-

views updated

CARLYON, Les 1942-

PERSONAL: Born 1942, in Northern Victoria, Australia; married; wife's name, Denise.

ADDRESSES: Home—Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Pan Macmillan Australia, Level 18, St. Martin's Tower, 31 Market Street, Sydney New South Wales 2000, Australia.

CAREER: Age, Melbourne, Australia, former editor and writer; Herald and Weekly Times, former editor-in-chief. RMIT, visiting lecturer.

AWARDS, HONORS: Walkley Award, 1971, for article about Bougainville; Graham Perkin Journalist of the Year Award, 1993; Carlton and United Best Australian Sports Writing Award.

WRITINGS:

Paper Chase: The Press under Investigation, Herald (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1982.

True Grit: Tales from a Decade on the Turf, Mandarin (Port Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1996.

Gallipoli, Pan Macmillan (Sydney, Australia), 2001.

SIDELIGHTS: Les Carlyon has been the editor of The Age and editor-in-chief of the Herald and Weekly Times group. He is well known for his articles on horse racing and has written on the subject for over thirty years.

True Grit: Tales from a Decade on the Turf is a collection of Carlyon's articles on horse racing. The articles tell about the horses, the jockeys, the Melbourne Cup, the races themselves, and more. "The horses, winners and losers are so well sketched that Carlyon's collection of columns emerges from old newsprint to continue shining brilliantly," praised Kevin Childs in a Law Institute Journal review.

In Gallipoli Carlyon provides extensive information on an important event in Australian history, that of the invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey on April 25, 1915, during World War I. The invasion was poorly planned by British General Ian Hamilton, and 8,709 Australian men died and another 19,441 were wounded. Carlyon discusses the steps of the poorly planned battle, describes the battlefields, explains why the invasion failed, and talks about some of the men who fought there. Before writing the book, Carlyon researched for years, including many trips to Gallipoli to learn about the land and the battlefields. Echo News contributor Jeremy Fenton concluded, "It is a book to be read again and again as new details present themselves and the 'reality' of the big picture sinks in for those of us lucky enough never to have been through such an experience."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Australian Book Review, December, 1996, Lisa Kerrigan, review of True Grit: Tales from a Decade on the Turf, p. 97; October, 2001, Martin Ball, "Back to Gallipoli," p. 18.

Law Institute Journal, Kevin Childs, review of TrueGrit, pp. 56-57.

National Observer, summer, 2002, I. C. F. Spry, review of Gallipoli, p. 71.

Quadrant, September, 2001, Peter Ryan, "A Magic Pudding of a Book," p. 81.

Times Literary Supplement, April 26, 2002, Jay Winter, "Their Name Liveth for Evermore," p. 26.