OR those still alive who spent their childhood in country houses during the war years, now, perhaps, is their finest hour. As the price of gas fluctuates and lamps go out on boilers all over Britain—shall we see them lit again in our lifetime?—the wartime generation can recall to us that period when the great houses of the kingdom froze majestically in defiance of Hitler. We—be we baby boomers, millennials or snowflakes, if such vulgar collective nouns can be applied to anyone inhabiting a country seat—who shiver now in defiance of Mr Putin, must allow them the satisfaction of telling us how ice formed on the inside of their nursery windows and of the invigorating qualities of cold baths long before Mr Wim
