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Evelyn Waugh was born in 1903 and was educated at Hertford College, Oxford. In 1928 he published his first novel, Decline and Fall, which was soon followed by Vile Bodies (1930), Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934) and Scoop (1938). In 1945 he published Brideshead Revisited and he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1952 for Men at Arms. Evelyn Waugh died in 1966.
A retelling of the story of St. Helena which has some support from tradition, leans on the picturesque in preference to the plausible (the author), is not intended as hagiography but as entertainment and permits some wilful anachronism - our Helena here bounces in with such expressions as What a sell . For all of this, there is no irreverence and Waugh's closing lines on this story of the woman who- through a dream- was to find guidance to the Cross on which Christ was crucified conveys a message of conviction and of hope. This life, which began in surmise, ended in legend, follows the accepted assumption that she was born in Britain, went with Constantius (dull when drunk and sly when sober, so her father said) to Europe where Constantius was to head up a great army, leave her for other women, and summarily announce his marriage to a second wife. Many years after the accession of her son, Constantine, as Emperor of the World, his black moods and black years of terrorization and death, Helena was to come to Rome, start on the pilgrimage which ended in her discovery of the Cross. An intellectual invention which is not without its spiritual significance, this still does not subdue the occasional bright badinage, the wit which is a worldly one, although it will be the name that will carry this to its audience. (Kirkus Reviews)
