Lord Young of Acton – also known as the journalist and commentator Toby Young – has been extolling the virtues of Hunstanton Tennis Tournament, which is held annually in the Victorian resort.

Writing in the Spectator magazine, he described the week-long event, known as Wimbledon-on-Sea, as a gathering of the like-minded that embodies values of public service, quiet patriotism and social cohesion that are now being knocked clean out of court in an era of rapid change.

“It’s easy to sneer at Hunstanton – the tournament, not the town – and I’ve been guilty of that myself,” admits Mr Young, whose 2001 memoir How To Lose Friends & Alienate People became a successful film of the same name, starring Simon Pegg.

“Most of the older attendees, with their Land Rover Defenders and burgundy gilets, could have walked straight out of the Sloane Ranger Handbook, while their teenage children drink too much and terrorise the town at night, only to show up on court first thing in the morning and play beautiful tennis.

Toby Young pictured with his wife Caroline at the 2008 premier of How To Lose Friends & Alienate People (Image: PA Archive/Press Association Images)

“There’s a sense that everyone belongs to the same social milieu, having gone to public schools and then on to Russell Group universities.

“This demographic undoubtedly has many virtues and I sometimes think Britain would be in better shape if they were still in charge,” he adds, somewhat regretfully.

“For one thing, they’re quietly patriotic and many do their bit to maintain the institutional fabric of the country.”

In the article, he recalled attending evensong at nearby Holme-next-the-Sea, where parishioners were only £16,000 short of raising the £500,000 needed to restore the church’s Norman tower.

The church tower at Holme, which is being restored (Image: Chris Bishop)

But, for Young, we live in troubled times. And the very foundations of society are now cracking just like the pinnacles atop the lofty tower.

Yet while we might face more sinister threats, tennis still offers Young hope even after players have finished knocking balls across the courts.

“It’s not unusual, when sitting down for a beer after a match, to discover that the red-trousered, pink-faced man sitting next to you is the chair of a big cancer charity,” he wrote.

“People like him have been chased out of politics, but they’ve found other ways to serve.”

The Young family has made the tournament, which is held each August, a summer tradition, though its head admits his playing days are now in the rear view mirror.

And while his wife Caroline won a cup in the ladies’ doubles a decade ago, their offspring have fared steadily worse after being forced to compete in older categories.

Hunstanton Lawn Tennis Tournament attracts more than 1,000 players of all ages (Image: Chris Bishop)

Mr Young, who turns 63 next month, mourns what he sees as the eclipsing of the fading social class who flood onto the recreation ground in their whites and swamp the gastro pubs and holiday cottages for miles around during “tennis week” each summer.

“At Oxford, where I was surrounded by them, all I could see was their complacency and looked forward to a new age of opportunity when they’d be replaced with the best and the brightest from every walk of life,” he adds.

“But 40 years have elapsed and that dream of a new Britain run by a meritocratic elite has turned sour.

“Our lanyard-wearing overlords owe as much to inherited privilege as the class they’ve eclipsed, only they’re the sons and daughters of chippy public-sector managers and Labour apparatchiks.”

Action at the Hunstanton Lawn Tennis Tournament (Image: Matthew Usher)

Mr Young adds: “Their project is to turn Great Britain and Northern Ireland into the Yookay – a comically awful parody of what used to be a flourishing constitutional monarchy – and they are three-quarters of the way there.

“If you want to know what it is they loathe so much about the old country, you could do worse than make a trip to Hunstanton.”

You’ll have to wait until next summer to test the theory. For the nets have now been taken down for another year and the PA has fallen silent.

The converted horsebox selling lattes and the frozen yoghurt van have moved on to pastures new.

But another bastion of British life stepped into the breach after players departed.

Caravans and campervans soon replaced the 4x4s and BMWs parked up on the parched grass beside the courts as a different milieu descended on Hunstanton, reaching for their kagoules as skies darkened after the drought.

Caravans on the recreation ground at Hunstanton (Image: Chris Bishop)

So if you want to sample what made the old country special, you’ll have to wait until the players pull on their designer pumps and grab their racquets again next year.

Until then, it’s deuce as far as opinions are concerned.