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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Casual Cruelty

Casual Cruelty: Episode 1: The Lottery

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Episode 1

Episode 1: The Lottery

The Lottery

BBC Radio 4 - Casual Cruelty, The LotterySearch BBC

An exciting day for the inhabitants of a small American farming community.

The inhabitants of a small farming community in Vermont gather for what we begin to realise is a frightening local lottery. Read by Stacy Keach.

Stacy Keach reads Shirley Jackson's celebrated story, The Lottery, first published in the New Yorker in 1948. The inhabitants of a small farming community in Vermont gather each year for what we begin to realise is a 
frightening local lottery.

American author Shirley Jackson's work has been described as the 'literature of psychological suspense'. Writing from the 1940s into the 1960s, her style of 'creeping unease' was hugely popular, initially with readers of magazines such as Collier's, Good Housekeeping, Harper's, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and Woman's Home Companion.

After Jackson's early death in 1965, at the age of 48, her story collections began a marked revival of interest in her work. In recent years she has received increasing attention from literary critics and a new generation of readers. Her deceptively simple, apparently realistic style, often cloaking chilling or darkly hidden agendas, has influenced writers like Neil Gaiman, Stephen King and Nigel Kneale among others. 

Director: Martin Jarvis


Producer: Rosalind Ayres
A Jarvis & Ayres production for BBC Radio 4.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Series of short stories by the American author Shirley Jackson

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Casual Cruelty

Episode 1: The Lottery

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