Blanche d’Alpuget, widow of Bob Hawke, dies
Writer Blanche d’Alpuget, the widow of former prime minister Bob Hawke, has died, her family says.
D’Alpuget, 82, was an acclaimed author of biographies, novels and essays, including her political biography of former Prime Minister and her late husband Bob Hawke that won the NSW Premier’s Award.
She asked her family to share her final message to Australia:
“Our highest calling and greatest achievement is love, the rule of life. Love one another,” it read.
D’Alpuget is survived by her son Louis Pratt (from her first marriage to diplomat and journalist Tony Pratt), three Hawke step-children and several step-grandchildren.
She grew up as an only child in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and dipped into journalism before she set off travelling the world, living in England, France, Indonesia and Malaysia.
D’Alpuget returned to Australia at the age of 30 and began her career as a novelist.
She and Hawke began an affair in 1976 that continued while he was prime minister. But it nearly foundered over his refusal to leave his wife Hazel.
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Late last year, d’Alpuget revealed she was so upset at Hawke reneging on promises to marry her that she planned to kill him.
“I was going to stab him. I was going to see him and I had a very nice shoulder bag and in it I would have a Sabatier kitchen knife with a 10-inch blade,” she told the podcast Neil Mitchell Asks Why.
“I’d give him a hug and then from behind. No, no, from the front. I don’t believe in stabbing people in the back.”
D’Alpuget said she soon ditched her revenge plot so her six-year-old son Louis did not grow up the child of a murderer.
“I don’t know that I entertained the idea longer than 24 hours,” she said.
“It was really out of consideration for my son that I dropped the whole lot.”
Bob Hawke and D’Alpuget on their wedding day in Sydney in 1995. Photo: Getty
Hawke had proposed to her while drunk in the late ’70s and d’Alpuget left her husband, but just months later Hawke opted to stay with his wife Hazel as he chased his political career.
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“He had asked me to marry him and then reneged. Very sensibly, I might say,” d’Alpuget said.
“Thank God he did, for everybody’s sake, especially Australia’s. And I was terribly hurt. That was all.”
Hawke was prime minister from 1983 to 1991, leading the Labor party to victory at four consecutive elections.
D’Alpuget’s biography of him was published in 1982. The couple eventually married in 1995, and remained married until Hawke’s death in 2019.
“Although Bob had been an absolute philanderer and had hundreds of women during his time married to Hazel, I was the one blamed for the breakup of their marriage,” d’Alpuget told Mitchell.
She said Hawke was right to stay with Hazel so he could become prime minister.
“It was good for Australia. He was very good for Australia,” she said.
“It was the tension between love and duty. And he obeyed the call to duty.
“Which is how he saw it and how I see it.”
She said the couple had laughed when she told Hawke about her evil plans.
“He’d laugh and say, ‘If you decided you were going to do it, I wouldn’t want to be in the way’.”
-with AAP
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