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Book of the Week: Damn His Blood

Book of the Week: Damn His Blood: Episode 4

Damn His Blood

Episode 4

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Damn His Blood, Episode 4

Suspicion falls on the local farmers, whose stories don't seem to add up.

With the prime village murder suspect still on the loose, suspicion falls on the local farmers. Read by Alex Jennings.

'Damn him!' he swore. 'There is no more harm in shooting him than a mad dog!' 

The brutal murder of the Reverend George Parker in the rural village of Oddingley on Midsummer's Day in 1806 gripped the nation. It was a strange and stubborn case in an isolated Worcester village still bound by superstition and folklore, involving an investigation that lasted nearly a quarter of a century. It turned out to be a gripping true story of brutality, greed and ruthlessness in a rural community gone wildly astray. 

Damn His Blood is also fascinating glimpse into the darker side of English rural life at the beginning of the nineteenth century, far away from the civilised drawing rooms of Jane Austen, with a cast of characters straight out of Hardy.

Today: with the prime suspect still on the loose, suspicion falls on the local farmers, whose stories don't seem to add up...

Peter Moore is a young literary historian and journalist, who is currently teaching Creative Writing at City University in London.

Abridger: Viv Beeby
Producer: Justine Willett
The Reader is Alex Jennings, who is currently appearing in The Collaborators as Mikhail Bulgakov at the National Theatre and is currently starring in Silk on BBC One.

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Peter Moore's true tale of brutal murder in an English village on Midsummer's Day, 1806

Alex Jennings reads Peter Moore's true tale of brutal murder in a remote English village on Midsummer's Day, 1806. A shocking case of greed and revenge that gripped the nation

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