You can’t forget what Will Self says – even if you wish you could

It lasted for just a few seconds but was such a graphic illustration of the statistics behind the bombing campaign in Syria — and not a word was spoken. Martha Kearney called it an ‘audio graphic’ on the World at One on Monday and explained how Neal Razzell and James Beard for the World Service had been monitoring the number of US combat missions on Islamic State targets in Syria, hour by hour, 24/7, and comparing them with earlier bombing campaigns. Each electronic beat we heard represents one hour, Razzell told us; each beep represents the launch of one combat mission.

For Syria, the electronic beeps between each beat were quite far apart — clearly distinguishable. The sound we heard represented two raids an hour, he explained, every day for 450 days. Now listen to Serbia in 1999: the beeps were much closer together, but were not quite blurred together into one continuous beeping sound.