Blanche d’Alpuget is the acclaimed author of biographies, novels and essays. Her work, Robert J. Hawke: A Biography is considered one of the finest examples of political biography in Australia. Prior to that she wrote Mediator, A Biography of Sir Richard Kirby, for many years used as a text for teaching industrial relations. Her novels include Monkeys in the Dark, set in Indonesia and also a university text, Turtle Beach, set in Malaysia and made into a feature movie, Winter in Jerusalem, winner of the Australasian division of the Commonwealth Literature Award, and White Eye, published in 1993, a novel she personally disliked, that foretold a global pandemic from a laboratory created bug. Her books have won a host of literary prizes. She also wrote the controversial essays On Lust and On Longing, and a series on King Henry II of England and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. They are: The Young Lion, The Lion Rampant, the Lions’ Torment, The Lioness Wakes and The Cubs Roar.
