Carlyon was a former editor of the Age and was also a co-editor in chief of the Herald and Weekly Times. Winner of the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year Award in 1971, he was the author of several books on sport and Australian history, including the award winning Gallipoli (2001).
In 2006 Carlyon published The Great War, an account of the Australians at the Western Front in World War I. The Great War won two 2007 Australian Book Industry Awards - the Non-Fiction Book of the Year and the overall Book of the Year.