Jillian Robertson

Jill, Duchess of Hamilton (née Jillian Robertson; 30 January 1940 – 22 April 2018) was an Australian-born British journalist, environmentalist, and author.

Early life and career Jillian Robertson was born in Sydney on 30 January 1940. Her father was a First World War veteran. She grew up in Townsville, Queensland, Australia. After her return to Sydney in 1961, she trained as a newspaper reporter under Donald Horne.

In 1964, Robertson was sent to report from London. On her assignments she visited Afghanistan, India, Russia, Tahiti, the United States, and Vietnam. She interviewed, among others, the Dalai Lama, politicians Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, writers Nancy Mitford and P. G. Wodehouse, and actors Marlon Brando and Richard Burton. In November 1963, she attended a dinner for US president John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated four days later. In 1965, she became one of the first women to write about the effects of bombing raids during the Vietnam War.

In Marengo, the Myth of Napoleon's Horse (2000) she explored the history of Napoleon's favourite war horse, Marengo, and identified one of his hooves. In God, Guns and Israel (2009), which saw multiple editions and a translation into Italian, she identified the numerous evangelical Christians in the cabinet of Arthur Balfour who supported the creation of Israel. A First World War poetry anthology, Gallipoli to Gaza (2003), was also published. Her writing style reflected her enthusiasm for research and a Catholic approach, but she was never religious.

She developed a strong interest in the Holy Land and spent several months per year in Jerusalem, from where she wrote columns for the Catholic Herald. She enrolled into the School of African and Oriental Studies, first to do a Master of Arts degree and then a doctorate researching marriage law in Israel. Divorce in Israel is regulated exclusively by religious authorities, and she uncovered how Christian women who belong to restrictive churches convert in order to obtain a divorce. She simultaneously promoted native gardening at Gethsemane, and employed the principle in designing a garden near the Pool of Bethesda.

Robertson died of cancer on 22 April 2018 in Oxford, England, surrounded by friends who were helping her submit her thesis. She had decided to have no funeral because "funerals are a bore" and to instead donate her body to science.