HUNDREDS massacred in the Ivory Coast; fighting raging on in Libya while the RAF plans for flying missions overhead for the next six months; UN workers brutally killed because someone decided to indulge in a spot of book burning thousands of miles away; and “dissident republicans” murdering a young Roman Catholic policeman in Northern Ireland.

The mood instilled by the headlines is more suited to the darkest months of winter than the brighter days of spring.

Of all these horrors, it’s the single death in Ulster that creates the greatest chill for me. I have no links with Northern Ireland but, like many in this country, I grew up with the idea of terrorism as a fact of life, albeit a relatively distant one, thanks to The Troubles. Indeed, it has surprised me to hear latter-day politicians rattling on about al Qaida and its offshoots as if the idea people might want to bomb and kill us is something entirely new; have they forgotten the mayhem brought to the British mainland by the Irish terror at its height, plus the even greater loss of life and limb in Ulster itself?

Well, the warnings have been there for some time, that the peace process is in danger of being undermined by hardliners who never signed up to it in the first place, reinforced now by younger elements in the Catholic population who have lost faith with the republican old guard.

What links the death of PC Ronan Kerr in Omagh with the other grim news I mentioned above is that all these incidents are, to a greater or lesser extent, the product of civil wars, often described as the worst conflicts in terms of destruction and suffering.

In York, we are occasionally accused of being so steeped in history we don’t focus sufficiently on the present. Well, civil war is one thing we are very fortunate to be able to consign to the past.

The city seems to have been something of a lightning conductor where internal conflicts are concerned, but so long ago they are part of our rich heritage rather than a source of sorrow.

Thus it is that the anniversary of “England’s bloodiest battle”, when no fewer than 28,000 men are said to have died at nearby Towton, was marked not with commemorations, but with dramatic reconstructions and at least two new books. Mind you, given the anniversary in question was the 550th one, it’s perhaps not so surprising.

However, at the risk of starting a new civil war, I am forced to reveal that not everyone is convinced by Towton’s claim to gory fame.

I listened to a well-known military historian some years ago who was a bit doubtful about the casualty figures, pointing out figures for the size of medieval armies tended to be guesstimates on the high side, so a “goodly host” might be a dozen men and a dog, as he put it. Estimates of those killed in such encounters suffered from similar uncertainties, he suggested.

If you’re wondering why I’m not naming this historian, it’s because he was so worried about upsetting Towton enthusiasts that he prefaced his opinions with “don’t quote me on this, but…”. For my part, I wasn’t around in 1461, and mass graves near the site suggest serious bloodletting that day, so I reckon it’s impossible to disprove Towton’s claim to be the “bloodiest battle”.

Anyway, even if my historian had a point, it doesn’t detract from York’s bloody heritage, because his prime candidate for costliest conflict was in a later civil war – a very confusing battle, and the first in which one Oliver Cromwell made a major impact. I refer, of course, to Marston Moor, even closer to York, which cost the lives of about 4,000 royalists.

The site is very quiet today, and though it happened a mere 368 years ago the battle is, if anything, rather less celebrated than that at Towton – perhaps suggesting a very sensible desire to consign civil warfare to the past, and keep it there.