Uninterested in the old formalities, impatient with the conventional rigmarole and eager simply to put their food in front of people, they're asking themselves how much they can toy with the rest of the equation.
But then the prime minister – who started each letter to the monarch "Madam – Mr Macmillan with his humble duty to the Queen" and ended it "With my humble duty, I remain, Your Majesty's faithful and devoted servant" – was clinging desperately to the old formalities as everything else seemed to crumble away around him.
"It's certainly gratifying to find one has not been forgotten already," he says, a little of the old stiff formality returning.
Throughout their 27-year marriage, the couple, who met when she was 36 and he was nearly 20 years older than her and was the survivor of an earlier unhappy marriage, maintained an old-fashioned formality.
This summer, however, a few distinguished visitors are being treated with decidedly old-fashioned formality.
When he arrived, I was charmed by his old-fashioned formality, how he called me "Miss Sophia" and pulled out my chair.
The Frick Collection, for one, seems to take a perverse pleasure in its old-world formality; it does not permit children under the age of 10 on the grounds either.
The Argentine writer Eduardo Berti's first novel, in this lovely translation by Alexander Cameron and Paul Buck, is as mutable as its title suggests, possessing both an old-fashioned formality and a brisk tautness authentic to the changeable era it depicts.
But Mrs Bourne's credibility as a judge of such behaviour is undermined by her attachment to old-fashioned formality and convention, which must make it hard for her to understand the conduct of the young.
He arranges his napkin with an old-world formality, every inch the cultured, mittel-European émigré: perfectly laundered in a cream linen suit, accent as sharp as the bread knife.
