Les Carlyon was born in northern Victoria in 1942. He has been editor of the Melbourne Age and editor-in-chief of the Herald & Weekly Times group, as well as the winner of two Walkley Awards. His Gallipoli was published in 2001 to enormous critical and commercial success in Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain, and is now widely regarded as the definitive history of the campaign. Gallipoli won the Queensland Premier's Literary Award for Best History Book and the Australian Publishers Association Readers' Choice Award. Les Carlyon's The Great War was published in 2006 to universal acclaim and become one of Australia's biggest non-fiction bestsellers.