The Daily Mail's front page today gave Martin McGuinness's dates and two huge photos of bloodied and desperate people, one of Guildford in 1974 and one of Enniskillen in 1987. There was no further comment. Very balanced. Not. The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. A bit of Shakespeare from my 'O' Level English Lit.

What's been missing in the last couple of days is any sense of context regarding the Troubles, which, arguably, started when the troops moved in as a consequence of the repression of the efforts of the minority Catholic community to obtain civil rights and achieve an end to blatant discrimination by the police and local authorities (NOT arguable). Well it didn't take long for the role of the troops to do a 180-degree turn. Martin was a Catholic Derry boy who was radicalised (yeah, dirty word these days) by this turn of events. I've had a bad day today and I don't feel well, so I offer you these figures, slightly rounded I admit, without comment, the aspiration being to give that missing context, at least in part (as I know that numbers can't say everything). Source: Beeb.

Number killed in the Troubles: 3500.

Civilians killed: 2000

Catholic civilians killed: 1270

Protestant civilians killed: 730

Catholic civilians killed by security forces: 170

Protestant civilians killed by security forces : 23

Paramilitary nationalists killed by security forces: 180

Paramilitary Loyalists killed by security forces: less than 20

There are plenty of other figures, of course, and many more were injured than killed. But the figures show, if nothing else, that the Troubles were a conflict of three sides.