This weekend’s VE Day celebrations were a reminder that Britain, despite all our troubles, still scrubs up pretty well.

The pomp and circumstance, the monuments (albeit encased in unattractive orange plastic to ward off protesters), the marching bands, the fly-pasts: no one does it better, or with such class.

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.

Something about the sight of the actor Timothy Spall reading Churchill’s words in the style of the great man himself underlined the performative nature of it all.

Unthinkable as it would have been to hear the Prime Minister proclaiming them in his adenoidal twang, it felt odd to have to resort to an actor (however brilliant) to voice them.

But there are simply no modern politicians who can even begin to match the calibre of Britain’s wartime leader.

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.

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.