High life | 6 June 2019

They were putting the finishing touches to the giant tent as I drove up to Schloss Wolfsegg after an hour’s flight from Gstaad to a tiny nearby airport. With me were my son and two good friends, and the Pilatus felt like a Messerschmitt 109 cutting through the clouds and landing on a dime. The Pilatus is a great airplane. It can cruise for seven hours at 280 knots, and land at less than 500 metres. It seats six people very comfortably. The only man who has complained about this aircraft is my old friend Charlie Glass, who like a true lefty whined about the lavatory’s headroom. (I told him to try EasyJet next time, but lefties like to fly private and not mix with hoi polloi.)

The house party at the castle consisted of about 75 people, and the occasion was the ‘heilige Taufe’ — holy baptism — of Antonius Alexandros Edouard Maria, my grandson. Before I go on, a word about how good it feels to be far away from the vulgarities of today’s politically correct world. Civilisation matters a hell of a lot, and one is reminded of it in places such as my son-in-law’s schloss. Here we are, with nearly 1,500 years of achievement in philosophy, poetry, architecture, science, music, art and religion behind us, yet we allow cultural troglodytes and other such ‘cool’ types to set the agenda.

Western civilisation was basically the creation of the Church. It was believers such as Charles Martel in 732, Duke John in Lepanto in 1571 and Jan Sobieski in 1683 who defeated the invading Muslim hordes and safeguarded the Christian continent. Western civilisation was built on a Christian foundation, and the chivalric respect for women grew from the Church’s devotion to Mary.