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Wednesdays with Bob by Bob Hawke and Derek Rielly

by
December 2017, no. 397

Wednesdays with Bob by Bob Hawke and Derek Rielly

Macmillan, $29.99 hb, 289 pp, 9781760554262

Wednesdays with Bob by Bob Hawke and Derek Rielly

by
December 2017, no. 397

This is a book with a strange genesis. Its author, Derek Rielly, explains that he confessed to an agent one night that he’d always wanted to meet Bob Hawke. Her response was: ‘I know a publisher who loves Bob. Get me a proposal.’ In order to obtain Bob’s cooperation, Rielly had first to win over Blanche d’Alpuget and then the ‘greatest post-war prime minister’ himself. Given that Blanche herself has had two goes at nailing her husband’s colours to history’s mast, and that there is in fact a vast literature on The Hawke Ascendancy (as Paul Kelly, no less, tagged it), both of these ageing lovebirds are at first a little dubious about what more might be said. But the brash, youngish author (he tells us that Bob ‘filled my teenage season, culturally and politically’) informs the ex-PM he wants to interview him ‘about the joy of love. Desire. Finding true love through infidelity. Fatherhood. Success. Friendship. Religion in the modern world. Sport. The making of a man and what manhood is. Women. The lingering tang of any political bitterness. Enemies. The state of geopolitics. Death.’

Richard Walsh reviews 'Wednesdays with Bob' by Bob Hawke and Derek Rielly

Wednesdays with Bob

by Bob Hawke and Derek Rielly

Macmillan, $29.99 hb, 289 pp, 9781760554262