Evelyn Waugh

“In Helena, the play of words and the fireworks, the exquisite descriptions of landscapes, and even the finished portraits of the heroine, her husband, and her son, are always subordinate to the author's broad vision of the mixed anguish and hope with which the world of Constantine's time was filled.” —New York Herald Tribune “[Helena] may be read on two levels of appreciation: As bright entertainment, or as deceptively profound commentary. On both levels it's a superlatively well done book.” —Chicago Tribune Evelyn Waugh, author of the internationally acclaimed bestseller Brideshead Revisited and one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, considered Helena to be perhaps his finest novel. Based on the life of St. Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine and finder of the true cross, this spiritual adventure brings to life the political intrigues of ancient Rome and the early years of Christianity.

Helena

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In her own country the Gods had been honoured in their seasons; Helena had prayed, year by year, devoutly and at ease at the altars of her household and her people, had greeted the returning spring with sacrifices, had sought to placate the powers of death, had honoured the sun and the earth and the fertile seed.

Birds were in song all round her; the wooded hillside fell away, cleared and terraced on its lower slopes with vineyards and olive groves and orchards, while at its foot, far below, a river wandered through a rich landscape of villas and temples and little walled towns. Straight before her lay a primrose gleam of sunlit water, a line of purple and grey islands and beyond, above their crown, the single blue arch of the sea; and through the balmy smell of the woods her nostrils caught the distant, salt tang of the seaside, of her first home.

Helena quotes

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