Thomas Keneally on the website of the movement. He is also a keen supporter of rugby league football, in particular the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles club of the NRL. In 2004, he gave the sixth annual Tom Brock Lecture. He made an appearance in the 2007 rugby league drama film "The Final Winter". In March 2009, the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, gave an autographed copy of Keneally's biography "Lincoln" to President Barack Obama as a state gift. Keneally's nephew Ben is married to former Premier of New South Wales and Sky News Australia newscaster Kristina Keneally. Keneally wrote the Booker Prize-winning
Thomas Keneally novel in 1982, inspired by the efforts of Poldek Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor. In 1980, Keneally met Pfefferberg in the latter's shop, and learning that he was a novelist, Pfefferburg showed him his extensive files on Oskar Schindler, including the original list itself. Keneally was interested, and Pfefferberg became an advisor for the book, accompanying Keneally to Poland where they visited Kraków and the sites associated with the Schindler story. Keneally dedicated "Schindler's Ark" to Pfefferberg: "who by zeal and persistence caused this book to be written." He said in an interview in 2007 that what attracted him to Oskar