Veronica Brady (1929-2015) was a nun, academic and activist. Her intellectual life, rmly rooted in Australian culture, was focussed on stripping the thin veneer of our dominant materialistic culture to forgea greater understanding of our place in a more just world. One-time member of the ABC Board, Brady was a wine-loving, bike-riding, diminutive gure with a erce reputation for plain speaking. An expert on Australian literature, and living life as a communist in a community of Loreto nuns, teaching, she cut a non-conformist gure in an age when the humanist values she upheld seemed increasingly under threat. She strove to defend them with a sharp mind, a contemporary Christian theology, and a willingness to put her boots on the ground in street protests.e essays gathered here by colleagues, students, friends and family bring her compassion, interests and concerns to life with an immediacy, fondness and respect. She inspired others, through her writings, actions and teaching, and the essays reveal her larger-than-life character, her passion for teaching, her concerns for justice for Indigenous Australians, and the intellectual and spiritual legacy she bequeathed to us all.