New Book on Helen of Troy

There's a new book out on the woman whose face launched a thousand ships; it bears the arresting title Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore. I'm not familiar with the author (Bettany Hughes), but the book appears to be a standard deconstructionist work stressing an "ambivalence towards the ideal of female beauty." On the plus side, it looks like Hughes allows the possibility that Helen was real person.

A London Times review of this and another new book on Hercules can be found here.