Alexandra Hasluck

Dame Alexandra Hasluck, AD, alternatively named Lady Hasluck (26 August 1908 – 18 June 1993), was an author and social historian in Western Australia. She was the wife of Sir Paul Hasluck, Governor-General of Australia 1969-74.

Biography

Born Alexandra Margaret Martin Darker in Perth, Western Australia in 1908, she graduated from the University of Western Australia.

In 1932 she married Paul Hasluck, who (as Sir Paul) was Governor-General of Australia 1969-1974. In 1974, he was offered an extension of his term by the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, and he was willing to serve an extra two years, but Lady Hasluck (as she then was) refused to remain at Yarralumla longer than the originally agreed five years. Whitlam then appointed Sir John Kerr. Historians of the period are certain that if Hasluck had still been Governor-General in 1975, as he would have been had his wife not intervened, the constitutional crisis of that year would have ended differently. Hasluck himself implied this in his book, The Office of Governor-General and also in the Queale Lecture.

On 3 June 1978, Lady Hasluck was appointed the first of only two Dames of the Order of Australia for "services to Australian letters".

Dame Alexandra Hasluck's published works included talks to the Royal West Australian Historical Society as well as books and articles. One of her achievements was the editing of Audrey Tennyson's Vice-Regal Days, written by Lady (Audrey) Tennyson, wife of Hallam Tennyson, 2nd Baron Tennyson, who was Governor-General from 1903 to 1904.

She died in 1993. Dame Alexandra and Sir Paul Hasluck are joint eponyms of the Western Australian Federal House of Representatives Division of Hasluck.

Publications

• Portrait with Background (1955)
• Unwilling Emigrants (1959)
• Audrey Tennyson's Vice-Regal Days (1978)
• Portrait in a Mirror (1981).

See also

• Spouse of the Governor-General of Australia

Further reading

• Alexandra Hasluck - brief obituary Early Days, Vol. 10, no. 5 (1993)