CAN one generation cast envious glances back at another? The historian Tristram Hunt, writing about D-Day in one of the Sunday papers, referred in passing to this phenomenon.

Deep in a lengthy dispatch, he wrote: "Some have spoken fatuously of 'generational envy': a desire to be tested like the D-Day heroes."

It may well be fatuous to begrudge those who lived in more defining times, but is worth exploring the differences between the wartime generations and those that followed.

People who lived through the Second World War had their lives defined in a way that has not happened since. Those who fought survived the harshest of times, losing family, friends and comrades, and witnessing horrors that should not be seen.

They also, thanks to eventual victory, returned as best they could to normal life, comforted by knowing that they had done their bit towards saving the country.

The children and grandchildren of these soldiers, and of others who survived or endured the war, grew up in a world in which the war was fast disappearing. In search of their own definitions, they generally identified themselves through the era of their adolescence.

Ever since the swivelling arrival of rock'n'roll in the Fifties and the discovery of the teenager as a cultural icon, people have indentified themselves through a decade.

Really, this way of characterising a life applies most strictly to the Sixties, when everything happened (or at least in hindsight). But the trend caught hold, especially once these teenagers grew into television directors, media commentators and the like, who dwelt affectionately on their lost youth, summoning up I Love The Sixties TV programmes and the rest.

Instead of being defined by something as cataclysmic as war, people categorised themselves culturally by the music they listened to or the TV programmes they watched in a given decade. A soft way of grading yourself, but a happy one.

No sensible person living today in relative comfort and safety can wish to be tested like the war generation. Yet it is true that subsequent generations have no single definitive happening around which to gather.

It is worth remembering that the war generation didn't wish to be "tested" - that was just the way life rolled their way. There was no choice and they lived in "getting on with it" days, when just keeping going was as important as bravery.

In all the coverage and commentary of the D-Day celebrations, one theme I noticed was the wish for a better future, a hope that politicians could find different ways to settle dispute than engaging in wars.

A number of watery-eyed veterans expressed this thought and, watching from the comparative safety of 2004, it was easy to feel humbled and even heartened by these sentiments. The tone was of regretful remembrance rather than tattered triumphalism - and three cheers for that.

Something which does strike a clanking note in all this, however, is the belief that the D-Day generation gave everything for a way of life which was hardly worth such sacrifice. A number of commentators, including letter writers to this newspaper, have made the point, banging on about the general rottenness of modern life.

People who believe this seem to be suffering from what might be called reverse rose-tinted syndrome. They look around and feel everything is somehow wrong and lacking; then they glance back and see a rosy glow.

Better, surely, to remember and praise those who served and those who died - precisely because they bequeathed us a relatively prosperous and happy present.

A country can be defined by a generation too, and it could be argued that the enduring image of a battle-weary but victorious Britain does not fit us for the present or the future.

In a sense, it could be said we are still too defined by the last war, too wrapped up in that image of ourselves; too trapped in the memory of victory to fully fit ourselves into a changed world.

Also, the war generation lived through times when politicians and generals, dictators and despots, managed to squander untold millions of young lives. For all our faults, that is something this generation has so far managed to avoid - thanks, paradoxically, to the sacrifices of those who came earlier.

Updated: 10:12 Thursday, June 10, 2004