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 there. By 1942, the family had moved to 7 Loftus Crescent, Homebush, a working-class suburb in the west of Sydney and Keneally was enrolled at Christian Brothers St Patrick's College, Strathfield. Shortly after, his brother John was born. Keneally studied Honours English for his Leaving Certificate in 1952, under Brother James Athanasius McGlade, and won a Commonwealth scholarship. Keneally then entered St Patrick's Seminary, Manly, to train as a Catholic priest. Although he was ordained as a deacon while at the seminary, after six years there he left in a state of depression and without being ordained to the priesthood.