OF ALL the gems of wisdom expressed in the writings of William Shakespeare, none is more profound than the words he places in the mouth of Marc Antony in Julius Caesar.

“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones,” says the Roman general during a funeral oration for the great emperor.

Today we remember a single act of extraordinary evil that will continue to shape the future just as it has shaped the past.

Thirty years ago today, a jobbing antique dealer named Michael Ryan went on a bloody rampage through the Berkshire town of Hungerford, armed with an AK-47 rifle, a Beretta pistol, shotguns and a hand grenade.

Marlborough-born Ryan killed 16 people during his rampage, including his own mother, and injured 15 more.

This single act of depravity, known locally as ‘The Tragedy’, became notorious as the worst mass shooting ever to take place on British soil.

The day – August 19, 1987 – went something like this.

Local bobby Trevor Wainwright was on his way to a part-time gardening job in Inkpen, a small village just a few miles south of Hungerford.

His journey was interrupted when a call came through about a suspected armed robbery in nearby Froxfield.

However, it was his day off and Froxfield was, for him, off patch. He continued to Inkpen.

But PC Wainwright’s then-wife Jane frantically called to say that shots had been fired in Hungerford, just yards from their house.

Assuming the two incidents were connected, PC Wainwright jumped into his car and raced back to Hungerford as quickly as he could.

He noted the smell of cordite in the air, describing it as sharp, acrid and smoky.

The policeman was later to find out that his father, Douglas Wainwright, had been shot dead.

Twenty-six-year-old Ryan’s first victim was Susan Godfrey, who was picnicking with her children Hannah, then four, and James, two.

Ryan was on the rampage and he was slaughtering in a frenzied, indiscriminate fashion anyone who stood in his way.

Susan Godfrey, 33; Abdul Rahman Khan, 84; Francis Butler, 26; Sandra Hill, 22; Victor Gibbs, 66. Lives that were erased in an instant.

His killing spree continued until he hid in the John O’Gaunt Community College where he had once been a pupil.

Police tried to negotiate with him, but he ended his own life at 7pm. Throughout the day, more than 119 shots had been fired.

Speaking 10 years ago, press photographer Simon Apps described what he had seen.

“I recall a dead body lying in the park with the ambulance crew around – they had to duck down as they were getting shot at. I also saw a taxi driver who had been shot.

“The atmosphere was very tense. Everything was deserted. It was like walking through a ghost town.”

Questions of why and how necessarily follow such an event, though true closure is something the relatives of the murdered will never likely attain.

The murderer had what has been described as a normal upbringing, though his mother, Dorothy, was thought to have been somewhat overbearing. The subsequent investigation found her bank account had gone overdrawn largely because she bought her only child a new car every two years.

People said Ryan, an only child, was a fantasist who talked of a girlfriend who didn’t exist.

He was to Hungerford’s residents a “loner” and a “gun fanatic”.

One is forced to conjure the images created by Bruce Springsteen in his tragic acoustic ballad Nebraska, in which, after slaughtering 10 innocent people, the guilty man explains his actions thus: “I guess there’s just a meanness in this world.”

The people of Hungerford will never forget the meanness that was visited upon them 30 years ago today, nor should they.

And nor should we.