(Blanche d’Alpuget. Photo by ABC News)
Blanche d’Alpuget, a celebrated Australian writer and widow of former Prime Minister Bob Hawke, has d!ed at age 82.
She d!ed from complications related to influenza.
In a final message to the public, Blanche d’Alpuget said: “Our highest calling and greatest achievement is love, the rule of life. Love one another.”
Her family said she lived exactly as she wished, refusing to follow what others expected of her.
They remembered her as full of energy, kindness and curiosity, with a deep love for beauty, ideas, history and good conversation.
Her family said they would miss her strength, humour, curiosity and love tremendously.
Blanche d’Alpuget and Bob Hawke shared what the family called a great love over nearly 24 years together.
They married in 1995 and stayed together until Bob Hawke d!ed in 2019 at age 89.
Born in Sydney, Blanche d’Alpuget lived in England, France, Indonesia and Malaysia.
She became a successful author and biographer, publishing more than a dozen books.
Her most famous work was a 1982 biography of Bob Hawke that won the New South Wales Premier’s Award and became a bestseller.
Blanche d’Alpuget and Bob Hawke first met in the 1970s and began their relationship while he was still married to his first wife, Hazel.
She later became closely connected to Bob Hawke’s political legacy through her writing about his life and work.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese mourned her passing, calling her a true original.
He praised her talent as both a fiction and non-fiction writer, saying her novels were compelling and her biographies thorough and definitive.
South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas also paid tribute, describing Blanche d’Alpuget as a woman of great intellect, warmth and presence.
He noted she remained a devoted keeper of Bob Hawke’s legacy after his d!eath.
Blanche d’Alpuget is survived by her son Louis Pratt, an artist and sculptor, his wife Brianna and granddaughter Sienna.
She is also survived by Bob Hawke’s children Sue Pieters-Hawke, Rosslyn Dillon and Stephen Hawke and their children and grandchildren, to whom she was close.
Political historian Professor Chris Wallace recalled that the late Labor minister Susan Ryan once described Blanche d’Alpuget as full of fun.
