Evelyn Waugh - Helena

Waugh's novel about St. Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine. I enjoyed the book quite a lot. It has lots of deep themes and messages (see Part IV this essay by G. Weigel, for example), interspersed with some rather silly jokes - like Constantine explaining to his sculptors that he wants no 'modern art' on his triumphal arch. So it is an easy read (I read most of it on the plane to B'lore), but it does make one think. Actually, a great example of all this, complete with the (semi-)silly jokes - is the (well-known) Helena's meditation on the three royal sages - "How laboriously you came, taking sights and calculating, where the shepherds have run barefoot! ... You came at length to the final stage of your pilgrimage, and the great star stood still above you. What did you do? You stopped to call on King Herod. .. Yet you came, and were not turned away."