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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. 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.

It's not just that the few remaining veterans of the Second World War are very much in the twilight of their years, or that the woman who led that generation through their darkest hours with her parents - Queen Elizabeth II - is gone. How they ever managed to go on to live anything even resembling a normal existence is a mystery to me. But somehow, they did. They knew the value of life, you see, understood how precious and precarious it is. They had survived: they owed it to those who did not to keep going.

Neither education or money are absolutely necessary to become a businessman. Both of those things do help, however, as an education provides some of the information that can help and money provides capital. I have no doubt that his experience was by no means unusual. We wave our little flags today, pile the cream and jam on our scones, chink our teacups. But what that generation endured is hard to fathom, decades on. No technology, no phones, relatively basic medicine, no touchy-feely therapy sessions.

It was do or die; you had no choice but to get on with it. There is no ‘shoulders back, heads up' nowadays. No ‘keep calm and carry on'. Just ‘me, me, me' - as exemplified by research conducted earlier this year by The Times, in which just 11 per cent of Gen Z (young adults aged 18-27) said they would be willing to fight for their country. There is more passion, more vitality, in someone like Joy Trew, 98, a great-grandmother from Bristol who served as a corporal in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, than in your average 18-year-old, sitting in their bedroom watching TikToks or feeling triggered because someone's misgendered their cat.

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? 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.