Tony Wright on the death of former Age editor and author Les Carlyon
at the tender age of 33, and in the early 1980s, having spent time as a visiting lecturer in journalism at RMIT, became editor-in-chief of theThough he was considered a fine editor and shaper of young journalists, it was always the words that defined him.Carlyon wrote about everything: often horses, which he loved; sometimes war and, always, people., a history that generated an enormous billowing of renewed interest in that old military disaster at the start of this century.
He immersed himself like few others in the subjects that took his fancy. He spent seven weeks walking Gallipoli, breathing its dust in sunshine and shivering among trenchlines during a snowstorm, before setting to the job of writing about it. And once he flew to New Zealand to sit by the grave of a stallion, Sir Tristram, that had been buried standing up. He wanted to feel its spirit to assist him in writing about the stallion's son, the great Zabeel, a prodigious sire.
Another great man of Australian journalism, Harry Gordon, gone now too, once said of Carlyon: "He's been called Australia's Damon Runyon, but that tag is far too limiting to do him justice. Certainly his turf stories are usually character-driven gems. But read him on Anzac Cove, or Bradman, or Ted Whitten, or any part of the essence of this country. He writes with gritty elegance.
Carlyon, a modest fellow who never much cared for frippery, would, you might imagine, have approved. Gritty elegance.
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