There is much interest in this life story, both because of the nature of its subject and because of the potential it has to illuminate significant areas of Australian cultural and social life. Born Pat Brady in 1929, the elder of two daughters of comfortable, middle-class parents, Brady had an idyllic childhood. Educated in Melbourne, first at a Sacred Heart primary school, then by Loreto nuns who provided her with both intellectual and spiritual inspiration, Brady’s intense intelligence and love of reading were fostered from an early age, both at school and at home, especially by her father. As a child, she had several mystical experiences, transcendent moments that Jordan describes as ‘glimpses … of a divine immanence’, and by late adolescence Brady was seriously considering a religious vocation. Her mother, who died when Brady was seventeen, counselled her to complete a university degree before she undertook such a commitment, so she went to Melbourne University, majoring in English and History.

Brady taught for a year, then entered a Loreto order in Ballarat, describing this decision in typically energetic and practical terms: she felt that she had to ‘give it a go’. Veronica was the religious name she chose and has kept. Often asked why she became and has remained a nun, Brady says she was ‘born to be celibate’. After several years of secondary teaching, she was chosen in 1966 to go to the United States, then Canada, to undertake a postgraduate degree. Her thesis topic was Patrick White, whose writing she has described as ‘provocative, transfiguring, pugnacious’, adjectives that could equally be applied to Brady herself. Her work on White has been important, preceding as it did widespread recognition of his stature as a writer.

After her return to Australia, in 1972, Brady was appointed a tutor in the English Department at the University of Western Australia, and she has remained in Perth since then. Brady’s ability as a teacher and love of scholarship, her independent intellect and passionate commitment to social justice in a growing range of areas, found their ideal space in academic life. She made full use of the freedom from the usual mundane preoccupations of daily life that her membership of a religious community gave her, and became an increasingly influential public figure, always involved in vigorous debate inside and outside the academy. For left-wing activist intellectuals like Brady, the 1970s were golden years of social reform in Australia, and the diminutive figure of the bike-riding nun, as energetic physically as she was intellectually, became legendary around Perth.

Brady’s appointment to the board of the ABC in 1983 widened that sphere of influence, and she became known nationally. This appointment came at a difficult time in the ABC’s history, and those difficulties were exacerbated by dissension among board members. Brady’s tenure, along with that of four other new members, was not renewed after an initial three-year term. Courageous and uncompromising in her attitudes, Brady has the potential to be as dogmatic as those she accuses of this fault. An extract from an interview she held with Patrick White on ABC Radio National is illustrative. When she referred to him as ‘a compassionate writer’, he replied, ‘I’m not sure I’m a compassionate writer’, to which Brady responded, ‘Of course you are!’

Brady’s retirement from teaching in 1994 coincided with an invitation from Angus & Robertson to write a critical biography of Judith Wright, a writer whose active engagement with environmental and social rights issues matched Brady’s. That work, South of My Days, was published in 1998, to a mixed reception. Latterly, Brady has indulged in a whirlwind of activity, travelling and speaking both nationally and internationally, writing and lending her voice and her presence, sometimes to her own personal cost, to numerous causes.

This biography lays the ground for a much more critical and interpretative work. Larrikin Angel requires a bibliography of Brady’s written work; Jordan does, however, quote from that work and from Brady’s little-known poetry. There are some wonderful illustrations – a ringleted little girl in a sort of a mob cap on the occasion of Brady’s first communion is endearing – and there is the unfamiliar image of Brady in a nun’s habit prior to Vatican II, when such conventions were relaxed.

The personal, penultimate chapter, concerned with the author’s and Brady’s undertaking the pilgrim’s walk to the shrine of Santiago in Compestela, when Brady was seventy, is particularly revealing. It quickly became clear that Brady, pictured bowed beneath a backpack nearly as big as herself, simply did not have the physical stamina for even part of this walk. In addition, she hated the pilgrims’ ‘refugios’ and was intolerant of the privations other walkers took for granted. Jordan comments mildly that ‘I don’t think she accepts bodily necessity very gracefully, her approach to life being much more cerebral and spiritual’. Later, however, in Spain again, Brady wrote to Jordan that she had revisited a bit of the Camino and ‘It’s all beginning to come into focus’.

Larrikin Angel, which is available from the Round House website, provides its own focus on this remarkable woman’s life.