Why I turned to crime: Blanche d’Alpuget, six years after losing Bob Hawke

Blanche d’Alpuget, Australia’s most highly regarded biographer, has just released a crime novel, The Bunny Club. I spoke to her this week.

Fitz: Blanche! I do want to get to your novel, but to cut to the chase, I reckon the question everybody in Australia wants answered when your name comes up is: “How is she getting on after the sad passing of her husband of 25 years, Bob Hawke?” When you and I had lunch late last year, you had been seriously crook?

“Of course, I still miss him” … Blanche d’Alpuget in 2022.Credit: Bianca De Marchi

Bd’A: I’m ... OK ... Yes, “OK” is the right word. I’m not yet “good”, right? I don’t recommend having COVID and pneumonia twice. As far as I’m concerned, I’m now ... doing fine. But I’d say for the first four years after losing Bob, it was very rough. But, well, I’m now into the sixth year, and I’m feeling very pleased with everything. Of course, I still miss him. That’s inevitable. I miss his sense of humour as much as anything, and the fun, the sheer fun we had together.

Fitz: And yet when I read Amanda Hooton’s great profile of you in Good Weekend in 2019, there was a strong quote where you gave your version of Hillary Clinton’s famous line about Bill Clinton: “He’s a hard dawg to keep on the porch ...” Your quote was: “Bob was either asleep, or a dog on a leash.”

Bd’A: [Laughs] Yes, but to be fair, Hillary was referring to Clinton’s philandering. That was never a problem with Bob and me.

Fitz: To be equally fair, his philandering was where you two got started!

Bd’A: [Laughs] Yeah.

Fitz: They say that “no man is a hero to his valet” and perhaps fewer still are heroes to biographers who go as deep as you did. Sally Loane once told me your masterpiece biography on him, Robert J. Hawke, was Australia’s first “psycho-bio”, where the reader was actually inside the subject’s head. And then you were married to him for 25 years. I am guessing he was your hero, but no one is more qualified than you to comment: what was the absolute core of the man?

Bd’A: Of course, I was always aware of his flaws, but he was and still remains a hero. He was a cultural hero, Peter, for Australia, and he was a genuine charismatic. And charismatics are very odd people. They’re not made, they’re born. And Bob was one of those. It’s an energy that surrounds them. People can’t resist wanting to come close to that energy and actually physically touch them, right?

Blanche D’Alpuget interviewing Bob Hawke, her future husband, in 1986. Credit: Fairfax Archive

Fitz: I am acutely aware – and I’m not joking – that your mastery of the English language is much better than mine, and for my sins I have never heard of “charismatic” used as a noun, rather than an adjective. You’re saying there was something special about Bob from day one?

Bd’A: Yes, and that was evident from when he was quite young, according to his father, Clem. He was always the undoubted leader of the gang of kids he ran with – and that increased greatly after his motorbike accident when he was 17, in which he almost died. They prayed around the clock – including a whole lot of members of the church beside his bed – for days upon days upon days. And against all the odds, his life was saved, and he came out of that believing that he had a purpose in life, and it was to better mankind. And I think that was the final sort of click that made him a charismatic, which developed from there.

Fitz: You’ve already detailed how, on your second meeting, you felt such a pull towards that charisma that there was, as I think you put it, just a “wordless understanding that we were going to sleep together”.

Bd’A: Yes, that was in Australia. And that was my third meeting with him.

Fitz: That was a great love story, which then completely stopped when he became prime minister, until you got the phone call from him starting with “G’day”, and it all started again.

Bd’A: Yes, happily.

Fitz: Now it’s none of my damn business, and I deserve to be told to get back in my box and stop being so impertinent, but did it start again before he left the Lodge, or after he left The Lodge?

Bd’A: Oh, before!

Fitz: As somebody who’s read a lot of political biographies, I have always cherished the story of the death of John Curtin in David Day’s biography where our great wartime prime minister came out of a coma in The Lodge, to find his driver by the bed, and so asked softly: “Who won the football?” “Fitzroy won, sir,” the driver replied, naming Curtin’s favourite team. It was a Wednesday. Neither Fitzroy nor anyone else had played. “That’s fine,” Curtin replied. “A very good team, Fitzroy.” May I ask, what were Bob Hawke’s last words?

d’Alpuget in 1982.Credit: Fairfax

Bd’A: His last words were, “This is killing me. I’m dying.” It was, and he was. I have a great belief in the spiritual world, and I believe the spiritual governs the material. The angel of death – for want of a better term – had come and taken a great bite out of him, taking his spleen when he was 17. And now the angel of death had returned, in exactly the same spot where he was seized with excruciating pain. The doctor, whom I called, who’d been treating him before, had no explanation.

Fitz: The richness of your life experience has obviously greatly strengthened your writing, but to get to your just-released book, I confess surprise that you have gone down the crime fiction path?

Bd’A: I love it! I find fiction much more difficult than non-fiction, much more difficult, therefore much more challenging and much more exciting.

Fitz: Fair enough, I guess. But let’s go to the blurb for The Bunny Club: “Step into the gripping world of Evelyn Sinclair, the beloved morning television host whose glamorous life takes a dark turn.” Blanche, you’ll excuse me if I blanch a little myself under the circumstances ... Where did the inspiration for that come from?

Bd’A: [Laughing] Some idiot thought I was writing about your lovely wife. The inspiration for that came from the inspiration shop – my head. And I loved writing it. I’d never written crime fiction before, and that was another thing I wanted, the challenge of a new genre, and crime is completely different from writing a regular novel. There are a whole lot of rules and traditions that you must observe in crime fiction for it to work. And there’s also an understanding that you have with the reader that you’ll bamboozle them as much as possible during the course of the book, but in the end, you’ll tell them who done it and why done it. And one of the pleasures in reading crime fiction, the reason people do it, is because they spend the entire book thinking, is it him, is it her? Is it them? Is it that one? And then there’s a real pleasure in picking the right one.

Fitz: You’ll be pleased to hear that a woman I met on Saturday morning at the Manly Writers’ Festival – where you’d launched it the night before – said to me: “I’ve read Blanche’s book, and it’s absolutely fantastic.” Are you surprised to get that kind of reaction this early?

Bd’A: Thank you. All the people who are writing to me are raving about it, but on the other hand the people who don’t like it wouldn’t be writing to me, would they?

Fitz: Well, let me be a little more frank than before. You will be familiar with the movie trope from the 1950s, “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” My version of that, while putting it 50 times more respectfully, is: “What is a writer of your extraordinary calibre, the finest biographer in the country, doing in [sniff] crime fiction?”

Bd’A: Simply because I love a challenge. And with this crime I loved the research into murder and investigation, into breakfast television – all of which I do myself – and I love tackling the whole thing from first to last. I had to do seven drafts of this book before I got it right, and it wasn’t until the sixth draft that I truly understood what I was writing about. I often don’t understand the sort of hidden theme of a book until it’s done, and in this one, there’s a second story hiding in plain sight. Very few readers will pick it up, but those that do will enjoy it enormously.

Fitz: Did you talk to any well-known breakfast television hosts as part of your research?

Bd’A: I have talked to many over the years!

Fitz: Given your background, you must be following the election campaign closely. Do you have any strong views about it?

Bd’A: I thought from the beginning that Labor would win. Scott Morrison lost 19 seats, so it’s a hell of an ask for Peter Dutton to win as many seats as he needs in one go. Anthony Albanese made a couple of mistakes, in my view, but overall, he’s made a very good fist of his first term, and deserves to be re-elected.

Fitz: Last question. You said that you believe in the spiritual world. Do you feel like Bob’s spirit is around you?

Bd’A: I feel like Bob lives in my heart.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Blanche d’Alpuget at the Bob Hawke Beer & Leisure Centre in Marrickville in 2022. Credit: Bianca De Marchi

Fitz: Thank you for your time. Again, good luck with your book – and more importantly your health.

Bd’A: Thank you, Peter.