Not long ago, when Emperor Akihito of Japan traveled to Britain for a state visit, a group of former British POWs demonstrated in protest along the route of the royal parade to Buckingham Palace. Although there are few British cows more sacred than the remaining survivors of Japanese captivity during the Second World War, Auberon Waugh denounced in the Sunday Telegraph “these angry, avaricious old men” who had decided “to make an exhibition of themselves and insult our guests of honor.”

He went on to note that “nobody quite dared to tell these Thai-Burma road veterans to shut up and count themselves lucky to have survived” because the country remained regretably “stuck in wartime attitudes,” including a lot of humbug about the nation’s suffering. In fact, he wrote, “for nearly all those who were young adults in the war, and connected in any way with war work, it was quite easily the happiest time of their lives. . . . Survivors return to those years with joy whenever they get the chance. We should envy them. But it does not look as if we shall ever be able to afford another. Those who knew the suffering, as well as the fun, must count themselves exceptionally lucky.”