Vale Les Carlyon, man of words

“He is a man to look up to. He got the facts right. He did all his reporting first-hand. He did not defer to anyone, but he was never arrogant. He stayed in the background; he never thought he was the story.” These words were spoken in 2001 by Les Carlyon about Charles Bean, our pre-eminent witness to World War I. But they’re a snug fit for the reporter, editor and author, born six decades after Bean, who produced two magisterial accounts of that nation-shaping conflict in Gallipoli and The Great War.

Carlyon was farewelled yesterday at Flemington, Melbourne’s arena of turf desperates and dreamers. The perfectionist word whisperer was as captivated by horseracing’s human zoo as he was by champions like Black Caviar or Octagonal. Here’s Carlyon in a 2010 review for our pages: “A dawn of soft pink lights, and here we were at Flemington, near a row of cypress trees that creaked and whispered to the spring wind and caused horses to squeal and plunge.” His writing resembled him: lean, muscular, vernacular, old school. In full flight, he had the natural rhythm of human speech, the clarity and simplicity he observed in Orwell and Clive James. Carlyon held fast to news verities — less is more, engaging with readers, the tyranny of the deadline. He believed most of the problems in our trade were of craft, not ethics. Carlyon once said there were only two reasons for being a journalist. One is you’re curious about the world and the people in it; the other is because you love to write: “The rest is all dross. All journalists are ever remembered for are their words.” Carlyon’s will endure.