Blanche d’Alpuget, the Australian author and widow of former prime minister Bob Hawke, has died aged 82, her family has announced.
The award-winning writer asked her family to share a final message to Australia. It read: “Our highest calling and greatest achievement is love, the rule of life. Love one another.”
D’Alpuget is survived by her son, Louis Pratt, from her first marriage to diplomat and journalist Tony Pratt, along with three stepchildren and several step-grandchildren.
Her death comes seven years after Hawke, who led Australia from 1983 to 1991 and died aged 89 in May 2019. The couple had been married for nearly 25 years. ([abc.net.au](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-24/blanche-dalpuget-on-the-late-bob-hawke/11146404))
D’Alpuget disclosed in April 2020 that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, less than a year after her husband’s death.
The couple first met in Jakarta in 1970, when D’Alpuget was working as a journalist. They reconnected in the 1990s after Hawke asked her to write his biography, and their relationship developed into an affair.
They married in Sydney in 1995, after Hawke’s divorce from Hazel Hawke, his first wife of 38 years. The National Archives of Australia records that D’Alpuget’s relationship with Hawke began while both were married and that the couple later wed at the Ritz-Carlton in Double Bay. ([naa.gov.au](https://www.naa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-06/research-guide-bob-Hawke.pdf))
D’Alpuget grew up as an only child in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and began her career in journalism before travelling overseas. She returned to Australia at 30 and established herself as a novelist and biographer.
She remained a prominent literary figure in the years after Hawke’s death. In 2025, the ABC broadcast an interview programme about her life and public image, while The Guardian reported on the launch of her detective novel The Bunny Club. ([abc.net.au](https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/nightlife/blanche/105986722))
