Blanche d’Alpuget, the Australian writer and widow of former prime minister Bob Hawke, has died at the age of 82.
D’Alpuget was an acclaimed writer, whose work includes the highly regarded biography of Hawke that won the New South Wales premier’s award.
Her final statement was shared by her family:
“Our highest calling and greatest achievement is love, the rule of life. Love one another.”
In their statement, her family said they “will miss her force, her humour, her curiosity and her love beyond measure.
“Blanche wrote and lived entirely on her own terms.
“She was full of vitality, generosity and curiosity, with an extraordinary appetite for beauty, ideas, history, new places and spirited conversation.
“She refused to be confined by convention or by other people’s expectations of who she should be.”
Hawke and D’Apulget shared a “great love” for “almost 24 years of life, travel and companionship”, the family said.
She died from complications from influenza.
D’Alpuget was born in Sydney, and lived in England, France, Indonesia and Malaysia.
She is survived by her son from her first marriage, the artist and sculptor Louis Pratt, his wife Brianna, and her granddaughter Sienna.
“She was also very fond of Bob’s children, her stepchildren Sue Pieters-Hawke, Rosslyn Dillon and Stephen Hawke, and their children and grandchildren,” the family said.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, mourned D’Alpuget’s passing, saying in a statement that Australia had “lost a true one-off”.
“As a writer, she was at home in fiction as she was in non-fiction, working in each realm with a keen eye for every telling detail that opened up the humanity of her subject to her readers,” he said.
“Blanche’s novels were compelling works of verve and originality, and her biographies comprehensive and definitive – most famously those she wrote of Bob Hawke, who became her great love and ultimately her husband.
“It is so fitting that Blanche’s final message to us all is this: ‘Our highest calling and greatest achievement is love, the rule of life. Love one another.’
“May Blanche d’Alpuget rest in peace.”
D’Alpuget and Hawke married in 1995 and remained so until his death in 2019, aged 89.
The glamorous writer, who was of French and English heritage, published more than a dozen books, including Hawke’s biography, the bestselling 1982 book Robert J Hawke: A Biography.
The pair met in the 70s and began an affair – Hawke was still married to his first wife, Hazel.
D’Alpuget wrote when she interviewed him in 1976 for a biography of Sir Richard Kirby, that “the Muse had arrived”.
“With mutual, wordless consent it was agreed we would become lovers as soon as possible,” she wrote.
As well as the Hawke biography she wrote hefty historical novels and, most recently, she wrote a racy detective novel.
“All my books have had quite a bit of sex in them. Without that, we’re not here,” she said.
The South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, remembered D’Alpuget as a woman of “great intellect, warmth and presence”.
“Blanche was an accomplished Australian author and biographer in her own right, whose writing and contribution to our national story spanned decades,” Malinauskas wrote on social media.
Malinauskas described D’Alpuget’s partnership with Hawke as one of “great affection”, noting she remained a “passionate custodian of his legacy” after his death.
Professor Chris Wallace, a political historian from the University of Canberra, wrote the 2023 book Political lives: Australian prime ministers and their biographers.
She has recounted how the late Susan Ryan, Labor’s first female minister, described D’Alpuget as “full of fun”.
“In an era of dull and careless feminist dress codes she was a welcome sight at [Women’s Electoral Lobby] meetings, a little bird of paradise in gold high-heeled sandals, tight black slacks and a mink jacket to keep out the Canberra cold, topped by perfectly ordered blond curls, her face luminous with detailed make-up,” Ryan said.
