Book description
The Empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, made the historic
pilgrimage to Palestine, found pieces of wood from the true Cross, and
built churches at Bethlehem and Olivet. Her life coincided with one of
the great turning-points of history: the recognition of Christianity as
the religion of the Roman Empire. The enormous conflicting forces of the
age, and the corruption, treachery, and madness of Imperial Rome combine
to give Evelyn Waugh the theme for one of his most arresting and
memorable novels. 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.
