Word: helena
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...Evelyn Waugh, picking his way through facts and legends, tells Helena's story.† Satirist Waugh has put away his satire this time. The religious theme of Helena runs close to the ruling passion of Waugh's life, his adopted Roman Catholicism-perhaps too close to it. Any man with his heart in his mouth must either blurt the whole thing out or be content to say almost nothing at all. In Helena, Waugh says almost nothing at all about his own feelings, about his characters, or about the religious motives that compelled their lives. Not even...
Several times in his writing life-in his study of Jesuit Edmund Campion, in Brideshead Revisited, and now in Helena -Author Waugh has tried to clear the satiric brambles out of his literary field, and to plant in their stead the herb of grace. He has had no very impressive crop so far, but most Waugh readers don't mind. They can be pretty sure another season will bring forth a bucketful of raspberries on the old Waugh briers...
...Waugh follows a 12th Century legend in having Helena born a British princess. The more accepted view: she was born a commoner in Bithynia...
...have been severely scolded today over my laziness," said the exiled Napoleon Bonaparte to his companions one dinnertime at St. Helena. "I am therefore going to start work again [dictating my memoirs...
Napoleon remained a logician, in his fashion, to the bitter end. Searching the past from St. Helena, he found a marvelously neat reason for his defeat at Waterloo. He attributed it largely to the stupidity of the Duke of Wellington, who selected a battlefield from which it was impossible to effect a retreat. Hence, Wellington & Co. had no option but to go on holding the field even after they had lost it. "Oh, strange irony of human affairs!" murmurs the exiled logician as he looks back on the blundering British...