And yet the staff made us feel as though we belonged, even when the children disturbed the cathedral-like hush of the great lounge, where the noise level rarely rises above the click of backgammon counters. Moreover, they quickly discovered a wonderfully stocked children’s club, run by the infinitely tolerant Elizabeth, and an exciting swimming pool complete with cave.But we were there for the snow, and daylight revealed an extraordinary panorama over the frozen lake – where David Gower once misguidedly took his hire car for a spin. St Moritz had not seen a snowfall like it for more than 20 years, which is going some, for a town 1,800 metres up a Swiss Alp It was, as Eleanor pointed out, a winter wonderland. And she and her brothers played deliriously outside the hotel, at least until they realised that, while soft and pretty, snow is also cold and wet. We then repaired to Hanselmanns for pastries, as Cary Grant had done several decades before us.We could afford only two nights at the Palace, and moved on to Suvretta House, a vast, just-refurbished and similarly venerable hotel on its own mountainside a couple of miles out of town. Eva Peron, King Faisal and the Shah of Persia were all regulars at Suvretta House.

In the hotel’s ballroom, in 1919, Vaslav Nijinsky, the great Russian ballet dancer, performed for the last time in public before his descent into madness.For us, this was where the fun really started. Every year, Suvretta House commissions an ice-sculpture for children to play in. This year, to the uncontainable glee of Eleanor and Joseph, it was Harry Potter’s school, Hogwarts. It had tunnels and ramparts and a spectacular ice slide, and “Hogwarts” carved over the door. Next to it was a natural ice-rink, where Jane, Eleanor and Joseph took instruction from a former ice-dance champion, Wolfgang I chickened out I can’t skate. And I didn’t want to emulate Nijinsky by making Suvretta House the venue for my last public performance, too.Skiing was a different matter. With Jacob safely installed in Suvretta’s excellent kids’ club, the four of us shuffled off to the hotel’s own nursery slopes, where Jane and I – reasonable intermediates nine years ago, before children arrived to enrich our lives and stop us going on skiing holidays – quickly rediscovered our ski legs.

Eleanor and Joseph, meanwhile, received wonderful tuition and encouragement from the saintly Erica, and stopped for refreshments in an enormous wigwam.Later, we hired sledges from the hotel, selecting from a range that almost made me weep when I remembered my little tin tray. There were wooden ones and plastic ones, ones with steering wheels and baby-seats, and for all I know, ones with leather upholstery. And when we had picked three, they were harnessed to the back of a one-horse open sleigh which took us up the mountain The children sang “Jingle Bells”. The driver wore ear muffs.At first light the following morning I took Joseph to the Cresta Run to see what real sledging – or, strictly speaking, tobogganing – is all about. A gaggle of English ex-public schoolboys stood around, wearing tweed trousers and holding shabby toboggans. A record of the fastest times from the day before, headed by Lord Dalmeny and featuring Prince C zu Fuerstenberg, emphasised the social élitism of the Cresta, which is run by the redoubtable Colonel Digby Willoughby.The Cresta is a snowy corner of a foreign field which is forever England.

The Union Jack flaps from the junction box, and the plummy voice of Colonel Willoughby rings out through a loudspeaker, sternly instructing participants to take their marks “Hastings to the box.” I watched Hastings quail. This was his first time, not that Colonel Willoughby was making allowances. “Hastings, 125.42 (seconds),” he bellowed a few minutes later “That’s no good. You’re wasting our time, not listening to instructions.” Anne Robinson on The Weakest Link was never as disdainful And Joseph recognised the injustice of it “Daddy, that’s not fair He did his best.” I was heartened by Joseph’s compassion. I hope he will be just as understanding when I explain that, failing a win on the Lottery, we won’t be rushing back to St Moritz. After all, at the Suvretta House, we were charged 10 Swiss francs, nearly a fiver, for filling a baby’s bottle with milk. But of course my children will remember Hogwarts made out of ice long after I have stopped resenting the cost.Brian Viner travelled with Seasons in Style (0870 0732766, www.seasonsinstyle.co.uk), which offers seven-night packages at Badrutt’s Palace Hotel, St Moritz, from £4,750 per family, based on two adults and two children, including British Airways flights, superior B&B accommodation and private transfers.