Here is an upsettingly predictable statistic: three years ago authorities in England and Wales recorded more homicides than at any time in the last century; 1,043 deaths in a year — possibly the most since the Civil War. Murder had rocketed.

So far, so depressingly boring. In crime-wave Britain, rocketing is precisely what murder statistics are supposed to do. This week a 43-year-old man was killed by teenagers in Henley, and investigations continue into a suspected serial killer in Ipswich. It is a supposed axiom of modern life that the streets are more dangerous, the world more frightening.

Yet the cause of the rise was actually more nuanced than that: 2002 was also the year that the inquiry into the GP Harold Shipman announced its results. In the course of one afternoon 172 murders, most carried out years before, were added to recorded crime.

In the world league table of murder rates, the horrific activities of a single man raised the UK above much of the West. And the next year we dropped right back down. The mundane truth is that, however harrowing the individual atrocities, when it comes to murder Britain is extremely average.

Homicide statistics, which include manslaughter and infanticide, are generally measured in terms of victims per 100,000 people. The Home Office produced a paper comparing the UK in 2001 with other Western countries. England and Wales, which are measured separately, had a rate of 1.61 and Scotland and Northern Ireland were a bit higher.

In comparison, the EU average was 1.59, Finland endured 2.86 deaths per 100,000 people and the US had a whopping 5.56. Since then the UK’s overall murder rate has actually fallen very slightly.

Of course any murders are unacceptable. But it is one of the more bizarre elements of our nation’s psyche that we seem genuinely to want to believe — at least if our press is anything to go by — that Britain is on the verge of apocalypse.

Here are the facts: last year there were 765 recorded homicides in England and Wales — roughly equivalent to the 1998 level — and that included the 52 victims of the July 7 bombing. In the years immediately preceding 1998 the level remained essentially stable.

The overall trend has been for a small, but steady, increase in the murder rate since 1945, although the same is not true if you look back to 1900. But that is rarely the argument being made.

Murders, although individually horrific, are still extremely rare. And as tragic as the Shipman case was, if one man — even one of the world’s most prolific serial killers — can raise the homicide rate by almost 20 per cent, then our social decline is nowhere near as bad as some tabloids would have us believe.

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