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The other victims in Laos were 57-year-old American James Huston, two 19-year-old Australian women Holly Morton-Bowles and Bianca Jones and Danish friends Anne-Sofie Orkild Coyman, 20, and Freja Sorensen, 21. This, let us not forget, is supposed to be a prince of the realm. A man whose sense of duty and gratitude to the nation that gave him everything - status, a privileged education, gilded opportunity, a lavish wedding, homes, baubles, you name it, was such that he found even performing the most basic royal duties far too onerous and tiring, instead preferring to fabricate a pathetic victim narrative to justify his spectacular dereliction of duty.

Prince Harry is a classic case in point. He's older, of course, but his man-child mentality puts him firmly in this bracket. His contribution to the VE Day celebrations consisted of sitting down with a reporter working for the BBC, slagging off the Monarchy and the Government and whingeing about his own safety concerns. Forget that an entire generation ran towards Nazi Germany to protect HIS great-grandfather's Crown and HIS country; the real injustice here is that poor Harry doesn't get motorcycle outriders any more.

They have little or no sense of national identity, ‘nation' being a dirty word. They are far more interested in identity politics, such as trans issues and questions of race and so-called white privilege. The only thing they really seem to care about is how they come across on social media - a kind of ‘does my virtue look big in this?' mentality. How many of them will play their part in ridding the world of a true evil? How many will stand up for what's good and right, regardless of their own sacrifice?

How many will still rise to their feet, two years shy of their 100th birthdays, to salute the marching band? And just as a reminder of the absolute agony he's suffering, his tin-eared idiot of a wife posted a picture of him and their two children with their backs to the camera, enjoying their not-so-hard-earned ‘freedom' in an idyllic garden. But for all the jollity, all the smiles and uplifting stories, I could not escape a nagging sense of sadness.

A bitter feeling that it was all just a veneer, a performance rather than a true expression of solidarity. And don't get me wrong, it was wonderful to see so many people thronging the Mall, and all those street parties (in defiance of the gloomy weather). But for me, at any rate, the official celebrations were just tinged with… well, an inescapable sense of melancholy. Watching the Red Arrows, seeing the faces of the crowd, listening to the stories of the veterans, I felt a sense of wistful longing for a nation, a people, a spirit and, above all, a clarity of purpose that I fear no longer exists.

And may never exist again. The lack of self-awareness, the total entitlement, the utter selfishness: when you stop to think about it he's probably far more representative of modern British attitudes than his (comparatively) hard-working brother or father. How they ever managed to go on to live anything even resembling a normal existence is a mystery to me. But somehow, they did.