Les Carlyon- A Life in Words

CONDITION- VERY GOOD

Les Carlyon was one of Australia's greatest journalists and writers. His career in newspapers was stellar - he became editor of The Age at 33, and went on to become editor in chief of The Herald & Weekly Times. But he was always much more about the written word than about management, winning two Walkley Awards and the coveted Graham Perkin Journalist of the Year Award in a career where he covered everything from politics to horse racing.

Yet most Australians will know him as an author, writing books that gave us the very essence of our history and our culture - as though he was in the trenches of the Western Front, or in the betting ring at Flemington. His epic account of the first ANZAC campaign, Gallipoli (2001), was truly ground-breaking, combining incredible research and an ability to capture the human essence with a style that was distinctively his own. Gallipoli went on to become an international bestseller, and his sequel, The Great War (2006), won the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History, and was the 2007 Australian Book Industry Book of the Year. The Master (2012), an intimate portrait of Bart Cummings, cemented Les's place as Australia's greatest-ever horse racing writer.