Blanche D’Alpuget Bio

Although many Australians know Blanche d’Alpuget as the second wife of former prime minister Bob Hawke, she had already established herself as an award-winning writer long before their marriage. Her books have received major literary awards, been translated into several languages, and, in the case of Turtle Beach and Hawke, been adapted for the screen.

Early life and influences

Josephine Blanche d’Alpuget was born in Sydney in 1944 and was the only child of Josephone Curgenven and Louis Albert Poincaré d’Alpuget, a journalist, blue-water yachtsman and champion boxer.

​Writing formed part of her family history: her father was a sports writer, feature writer and news editor of Sydney’s The Sun, while her great-aunt after whom she was named, Blanche d’Alpuget, was a pioneering female journalist in Sydney and a supporter of the arts.

​D’Alpuget attended SCEGGS Darlinghurst before briefly studying at the University of Sydney. Her early working life in journalism included time at The Daily Mirror, but her experiences beyond Australia strongly influenced her first novels.

​Blanche d’Alpuget married her first husband, Tony Pratt, in 1965 and spent her twenties travelling and living in England, France, Indonesia, Malaysia and South East Asia, often to areas rarely visited by outsiders.

​In Indonesia she worked in the news and information bureau at the Australian Embassy. She later volunteered at the National Museum of Indonesia, leading a team in recataloguing its collection of Chinese export ceramics. This experience led her to become the youngest member at the time of the Oriental Ceramic Society.

Becoming an Australian author

Blanche d’Alpuget returned to Australia in 1973 and became involved in the women’s movement. She began writing seriously the following year, drawing upon the cultures, political tensions and conflicts she had encountered while overseas.

​Her first published book was Mediator: A Biography of Sir Richard Kirby in 1977. Kirby was a prominent judge in Australia’s industrial relations system, and the project established d’Alpuget’s interest in how authority operates both publicly and privately.

​She then went on to write several fiction novels, Monkeys in the Dark, Turtle Beach, Winter in Jerusalem and White Eye, which were set across Indonesia, Malaysia and Israel, and combined personal relationships with political upheaval.

​She wrote several other books both before and after her marriage to Bob Hawke, including the five-book historical series about Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine and the rise of the house of Plantagenet.

​Her most recent book, The Bunny Club, was published in 2025 and is a crime novel set in the wealthy eastern suburbs of Sydney and the Southern Highlands.

Blanche d’Alpuget’s published works

Blanche d’Alpuget has published several books, reviews and essays. All of her published works have been translated into several different languages.

• ​Mediator: a biography of Sir Richard Kirby (1977)

• Monkeys in the Sark (1980)

• Turtle Beach (1981)

• Robert J. Hawke: a biography (1982)

• Winter in Jerusalem (1986)

• Lust (1992)

• White Eye (1993)

• On longing (2008)

• Hawke: the Prime Minister (2010)

• The Young Lion (2013)

• The Lion Rampant (2014)

• The Lions’ Torment (2019)

• The Lioness Wakes (2020)

• The Cubs Roar (2020)

• The Bunny Club (2025)

Turtle Beach was made into a feature film in 1989 and featured Greta Scacchi and Jack Thompson, while Asher Keddie played d’Alpuget in the 2010 award-winning telemovie Hawke.

​Her personal essays, On Lust and On Longing, attracted a fair amount of attention for different reasons. On Lust centred around the secrecy that surrounded a respected man who had sexually abused children, while On Longing explored love, desire and her controversial relationship with Bob Hawke. Both essays dealt openly with subjects that many other writers have treated with more caution.

Achievements and awards

Over the course of her career, Blanche d’Alpuget has won several awards, including:

• 1980 – Sydney PEN Golden Jubilee Award for Fiction for Turtle Beach

• 1981 – NSW Premier’s Award for Non-Fiction for Robert J. Hawke: a biography

• 1982 – Braille Book of the Year Award for Turtle Beach

• 1982 – The Age Novel of the Year Award for Turtle Beach

• 1982 – South Australian Government’s Award for Fiction for Turtle Beach

• 1983 –  Braille Book of the Year Award for Robert J. Hawke: a biography

• 1987 – Inaugural Commonwealth Award for Literature – Australasian Division for Winter in Jerusalem

• 1989 – Guest of the Soviet Writers’ Union travelling in the USSR

• 2013 – The Young Lion among Best Books of 2013

Life away from writing

Blanche d’Alpuget has had several interests throughout the years beyond writing. In the early 1900s she was an ambassador for humanitarian organisation Austcare, travelling to Pakistan, Vietnam and Cambodia. She also spent 4 years between 2020 and 2024 as a patron of Inala, an organisation supporting people with intellectual disabilities.

​She has one son from her first marriage, artist and sculptor Louis Pratt, and through her marriage to Bob Hawke became stepmother to his three children and step-grandmother to six grandchildren.