It’s a beautiful, clear, cool Autumn morning here. It promises an afternoon of rays, hammocks, books and naps. Plus, I’m happy to say, intelligent conversation with a fellow-realist staying here for a few days.

There is no area quite like this one in September. Prune trees are shaken for their fruit, walnuts start dropping everywhere like so much nutritious rain; and the farmers variously behead sunflowers, chop down maize, and plough in more dung ready for next year. It’s busily fecund and gently sunny – depending on whether one’s job is to predict the best crop to get in the soil before winter, or reflect on a life largely passed.

I wasn’t around in 1914, but over the years I’ve spoken to some who were, and read the accounts of historians who were present in the Edwardian summer that ended forever on August 4th that year. The memories of it are as one: gentility, confidence and a wonderful summer – rudely broken by insane jingoism and the destructive human desire for glory. After four years of mud, deprivation, unimaginable horror and shell-shock, those who survived came back to a world not at all fit for heroes. Apart from anything else, most of the heroes were dead.

We in the West have had (give or take the odd blip here and there) sixty-five years of peace, material achievement, technological advance and eclectic entertainment of which our forebears could only have dreamed – assuming they could imagine phoning somebody in Norway on a wireless computer the size of a candy bar from the middle of the Gobi desert. And saying “Where are you?”

As always happens when the long-expected future paradise finally becomes the present, none of the predicted benefits of this epoch of milk and honey have materialised. Most of us work harder than ever, and are more indebted than ever. We consume more tranquilisers and antidepressants than any ‘happy’ culture should. We are afraid of risk, and constantly harangued by forces whose sole raison d’etre is to increase our neuroses about danger. We see far less originality in our arts output, and are less discerning in our ability to spot rubbish therein. We use a broad range of legal and illegal drugs that shift our consciousness away from this unappealing reality. And even when sober, we deny the worst elements of it, hurling insults at those who can see the folly, or switching on yet another piece of electronic escape to watch TV game shows, infantile sportsmen, talent contests, and lurid action games….or download everything from braindead music to sexdead porn.

There are porn, semi-porn, promote-celebrity, destroy-celebrity, macho-tit magazines covering every newsagents’ shelves with yellow and red splashes of blood and bile. They highlight the cruelty present in our society, the lack of feeling for those being variously dumped, outed or caught being unhappy, unfulfilled and unrepentant. Yet the same owners of this literary vomit ask each day in their old media why our society is one in which children kill each other, every other marriage fails, teenage pregnancy is commonplace, and every kid – from whatever background – claims a trail of half this and step that as relatives. I’d say “Look in the Mirror”, but of course what I’d really mean is the Sun, Heat, Close-Up, Grunt, and all the rest of the amoral media hell-bent on building piles of money while demolishing the structure of society.

This morning, Wayne Rooney has been at the hookers again. Last night, blows were exchanged on the X-Factor TV show. Tony Blair is promoting a book about how he and his chums destroyed most of what Britain still had going for it. The Duchess of York has her proboscis in Oprah Winfrey’s veins. And the public has rejected the idea of a Papal visit on the grounds of cost. There are so many layers of irony in that result, I’m not even going to start.

In which case, you might argue, another 1914 is probably exactly what Western culture needs. And I do argue this, very strongly. But the aftermath which will follow the coming Crash does not encourage optimism. The educated classes have lost any grip on their understanding of liberty; they are distracted by celebrity indulgence and spin. Their concept of personal space, the rights of others and genuine democracy has been diluted to an almost homaeopathic level.

I’ve said it before and been called everything from boring to risible, but I will continue to say it: the soil is infinitely more rich today than it was for Hitler in 1929. The next one won’t be in jackboots, and may be a woman. But the false prophets are coming – it’s only a question of time.