Blanche d'Alpuget's Life of Love, Writing, and Legacy

Acclaimed author and biographer Blanche d'Alpuget, who passed away on Wednesday, left behind a legacy of unflinching honesty and a determination to be seen as more than just the second wife of former Prime Minister Bob Hawke.

d'Alpuget's biographical works were renowned for their candor, capturing her subjects in all their complexity. Industrial arbitrator Sir Richard Kirby likened reading her musings about him to being caught in the nude.

A Life of Writing and Love

Her future husband, Bob Hawke, described some of the images d'Alpuget had captured in her landmark biography of him as "grotesque".

d'Alpuget's biographies of Mr. Hawke were among her most well-known works, but she refused to be defined solely by her relationship with the former prime minister.

"I had my own sense of who I was and what I'd done, and I'd had a career before him," she said in an interview following Mr. Hawke's 2019 death.

This strong sense of self allowed her to weather the criticism that came her way after her love affair with the former prime minister became public.

"As for people disapproving of me, I figured that was their problem. They were acting in prejudice and ignorance," she said.

"If you're very in love with somebody, that love so enhances your life and your attitude, that negativity doesn't have much chance of getting a foothold."

A Chance Encounter

The pair first met in 1970 in Jakarta, where d'Alpuget had been living with her first husband, Anthony Pratt. Though Mr. Hawke had already made a name for himself in the union movement, he was an unknown to d'Alpuget.

"I'd been living overseas for nine years … I didn't know who the hell he was," she said.

"But I found him very, very interesting and, more to the point, a man of extremely good character."

They met again six years later, and d'Alpuget admitted there was an "energy" between them, even though Mr. Hawke was still married to his first wife, Hazel.

"Neither of us said a thing about it … we knew we would become lovers that night," she said.

She said she "used to feel very sad for Hazel" after Mr. Hawke divorced her.

Correcting the Record

Decades after the Hawke biography was first published, d'Alpuget returned to her seminal work in 2019 with the aim of setting the record straight about Mr. Hawke's relationship with political partner turned rival, former Prime Minister Paul Keating.

"There was a titanic struggle for the prime ministership, but beneath it, not dead but in hibernation, a profound respect and admiration lived on between them," d'Alpuget wrote in the updated biography.

She admitted she had been among those who believed a "warped depiction" of the pair's relationship in the lead-up to and the aftermath of Mr. Keating successfully challenging Mr. Hawke's leadership.

"I didn't believe my husband. I think a wife who believes her husband all the time is a very unwise woman," she said.

A Legacy of Writing

d'Alpuget's body of work outside her political biographies was eclectic, covering everything from essays exploring love and lust to meticulously researched historical fiction.

She said her fictional characters were as real to her as any of her other writing subjects.

"I used to just see them in front of me… they were like people I knew intensely well," she said.

But there were some subjects d'Alpuget refused to touch.

"I did think of writing about [King] Richard [I of England] and I did quite a lot of research and read about the Third Crusade. I just don't like him," she said.

"It helps [to like the subject] because you live with them so much."

A Final Portrait

Few biographers are present for their subject's death, but d'Alpuget was holding Mr. Hawke's hand when he died, some 40 years since they sat down for their first interview.

In the updated biography, d'Alpuget brings readers into the room where Mr. Hawke breathed his last.

"Hawke was in a deep morphine sleep. Pneumonia laboured his breathing. He would take a breath, then pause: was it his last?" she wrote.

"Suddenly, it seemed an invisible light filled the air around him and an inaudible whoosh issued with another ragged breath."

"With astonishment, the three of us [in the room] felt intense, uplifting joy."

A Lasting Memory

A number of made-for-television films have been made about Mr. Hawke and d'Alpuget, one of which she remembers as a "frightful" depiction.

"I hated it," she said.

"They had a prurient take of everything. So much nonsense is written about one … it just all merges into one great phantasmagoria."

d'Alpuget refused to write her own autobiography, instead appointing author Derek Riley to complete the task.

Among those interviewed for the biography Fridays with Blanche included her stepdaughter Sue Pieters-Hawke, who said Ms. d'Alpuget was "never nasty" but "always naughty".