Writer Blanche d'Alpuget has died aged 82, leaving a lasting imprint on Australian literature, and having influenced the course of political history with her pathbreaking 1982 book on the then prime ministerial aspirant, Bob Hawke.
Now deeply fused in the public mind with Hawke, d'Alpuget was already an acclaimed writer with significant star power of her own before becoming publicly associated with him through that book, and later through marriage – the second for both.
