Lawson Glassop was born in the Blue Mountains, NSW. He started a career in journalism before serving with the AIF in the Middle East where he worked on an army newspaper. Working for the Sydney Morning Herald after the war, he was a war correspondent in Korea.
He made a significant contribution to Australia's war literature with the novel We Were the Rats, published in 1944, which was a realistic portrayal of army life during wartime. Originally banned as obscene by the NSW government in 1946, a modified version of the book appeared in 1961.
Glassop also published a children's book and several other novels.
Source: Oxford Companion to Australian Literature
