![<I>Swifty</i> by Edmund Campion.](/web/20161008201101im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/m/0/e/4/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.grm0vd.png/1474514017607.jpg)
Swifty: A Life of Yvonne Swift
EDMUND CAMPION
NEW SOUTH, $34.99
Yvonne Swift was a distinctive nun from the start – arriving at Sacre Coeur, Rose Bay, at 10pm in ball gown to enter the novitiate. The novice who greeted her could only wonder how long she would last. As Edmund Campion's crisp, admiring biography reveals, she lasted a lifetime. She grew up in Melbourne and studied law at Melbourne University in the 1930s, eventually becoming principal of Sacre Coeur. Then, in 1970, she returned to the law, often defending victims of injustice – one of her celebrated cases resulted in a murder conviction being overturned. This is a descriptive record of the public life of a revered, formidable figure (although dubbed by some "A bloody difficult woman" and a "phoney") with only glimpses of the inner, emotional life: the consistent theme being that of a life defined by "giving".