The novel opens when she is a girl, living in Colchester - the daughter of King Coel. Short novel, in which the author takes what is known about 'Saint' Helena, and weaves the rest from imagination and legend. This review is from: Helena (Twentieth Century Classics) (Paperback) 'The enormous conflicting forces of the age, and the corruption, treachery and madness of Imperial Rome', 1 July 2015 To read the rest of my review please visit ( ) She makes a life for herself, farming in Dalmatia and sustaining her father’s contempt for Roman politics.

The marriage begins well but after the birth of her only child Crispus Constantius’s ambitions take over and she is neglected for long periods of time. Helena is a plain, horsey girl enjoying reading Homer’s Iliad with her tutor Marcias, when she attracts the attention of Constantius when he is deployed as a junior officer in Britain. And secondly, loosely based on the vaguest of historical fact, it allows Waugh full reign to create a most interesting story, enabling a critique of the excesses of the age which counters versions of Imperial Rome that focus more on murder and mayhem than the problem of political corruption and governance.Īnd it’s often droll, with surprisingly sensitive portraits of women in an era when men have so successfully hogged the limelight. What makes this a worthwhile book to read? Well, for a start, it’s always a good thing to have the role of women acknowledged in history, even belatedly. The Brits have acknowledged his pivotal role in establishing Christianity and Western Civilisation &c with an imposing statue at York Minster, because it was in York that his soldiers rebelled against the expectation that another Caesar would become Emperor and proclaimed him their leader instead. The Catholics (and Waugh was a Catholic) made her a saint because she purportedly discovered the True Cross, the one on which Jesus was crucified.Īs Waugh acknowledges in his brief and witty introduction, not much is known about Helena even though she was such a profound influence on her offspring that he was the first emperor to desist from persecuting the Christians, he issued the Edict of Milan which allowed them to practise their faith without being fed to the lions, and he prudently got himself baptised on his deathbed, thereby cleansing his soul of a lifetime of sins just in time for entry to the Pearly Gates.

It is a novella of just over 200 pages, and it’s historical fiction – a fictionalised life of Helena, Empress of the Roman Empire and the mother of Constantine the Great who reigned from 306–337. Although Waugh’s trademark humour makes this a distinctive work, Helena is not anything like A Handful of Dust or Brideshead Revisited or any of the other droll masterpieces of social commentary that you’ve heard of.

Helena waugh