'…a universal outpouring of savagery, imbecility and race hatred… Civilization was about to murder itself.'
—Bruce Duffy on the First World War, in The World as I Found It (1987)
'Overall, the genetic structure of the [British] Isles is stubbornly Celtic, if by that we mean descent from people who were here before the
Romans and who spoke a Celtic language.'
—Bryan Sykes, Blood of the Isles (2006)
Male all-cause mortality at age 15-34 years in different parts of the
United Kingdom: 1880-2006 (restricted vertical axis)
Comment: In contrast with the data for England, Wales and Scotland, the data for Northern Ireland appear not to include military deaths abroad during the Second World War.
Method: Mortality rates were downloaded from the Human Mortality Database (see www.mortality.org or
www.humanmortality.de)
on 4 December 2009. The mortality rates have been smoothed, as three-year moving averages
(see the Info page for details), to enable comparisons of several nations on one graph. The smoothing causes transient deviations from the
general trend to be understated, though the area under the curve remains the same.
Comment: In contrast with the data for England, Wales and Scotland, the data for Northern Ireland appear not to include military deaths abroad during the Second World War.
Method: Mortality rates were downloaded from the Human Mortality Database (see www.mortality.org or www.humanmortality.de) on 4 December 2009. The mortality rates have been smoothed, as three-year moving averages (see the Info page for details), to enable comparisons of several nations on one graph. The smoothing causes transient deviations from the general trend to be understated, though the area under the curve remains the same.