Gallipoli Centenary edition
Carlyon, Les

RRP
A$39.99

The siren-call of this beach has little to do with facts or common sense...It is rooted in myth and nostalgia - and imagining. Everyone who comes here tries to paint pictures on the empty landscape, to bring it back to the way it was. Dugouts and tents and piles of stores. Woolly clouds of shrapnel. Battleships rocking and half-hidden behind mustard clouds as they bombard the hills... The crackle of rifle fire up on the escarpment. The music of a smithy's hammer...Bayonets bobbing above the Turkish parapets...Bundles that were once men, arms and legs at grotesque angles, lying out in no-man's land. Men hefting water up the ridges. Men stumbling down the ridges, bloodied and befuddled, heading for the beach, following the same instinct that tells a wounded animal to go home. Flies. Flies everywhere. Blue flies, green flies, black flies. And the scent of thyme.

Les Carlyon's Gallipoli brings an epic tragedy to life. It takes readers into the trenches to witness the fear, courage and humour of the men who fought there. This haunting insight into the realities of war vividly describes the experiences of soldiers on both sides and also the machinations of the generals and politicians who held the lives of thousands in their hands.

The bloody struggle for the Dardanelles - once an ancient theatre for Alexander the Great and the Trojan Wars - was dominated by the terrain as much by men and steel. Carlyon has walked each gully, ridge and ravine, evoking the Anzac beachhead as no other writer has. And using a masterly blend of storytelling and scholarship, he has produced a superbly readable story of one of the defining moments in our history.

A century on from the landings, Les Carlyon's Gallipoli endures. Once read, it is never forgotten.

Author Information

Les Carlyon, AC, was born in northern Victoria in 1942. He was an editor of The Age, editor-in-chief of the Herald & Weekly Times, and the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year in 1993. Gallipoli was published in 2001 to vast critical and commercial success and became a number one best-seller in Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain. Acclaimed worldwide as a landmark chapter in histories of the First World War, it is now considered the definitive account of the campaign. The book's best-selling sequel, The Great War, was published in 2006 to widespread critical praise. Carlyon's other books for Pan Macmillan include The Master: A Personal Portrait of Bart Cummings.