How it must hurt the errant Duke of York to have had his titles stripped from him. One of the proudest moments of my life was when my grandmother’s daily first called me ‘Master Giles’ as she welcomed me into the dining room. In the days when chicken tasted of something, she asked, ‘Breast or leg, Master Giles?’ It caused my asthmatic chest to swell with pride. When I went to my prep school, there it was again, on letters addressed to ‘Master Giles Wood’. Surely there’s nothing wrong with liking having a title – is it wrong to submit to an atavistic urge to separate oneself from the common herd? Even Sir Keir Starmer likes elitism. Why else do you think he admitted he prefers Davos to Downing Street? I loved going skiing in the old days, when winter sporting holidays were exclusively taken by the upper-middle and upper...
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