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 Midsummers Day in 1806
- shot & beaten to death his body set on fire & left smouldering in his own glebe field
- gripped everyone from the Home Secretary in London to newspapermen across the country. It was a strange & stubborn case. The investigation lasted twenty-four years & involved inquests judges & coroners each more determined than the last to solve Oddingleys most gruesome crime
- or crimes as it turned out. Damn His Blood" is a fascinating glimpse into English rural life at the beginning of the nineteenth century so often epitomised by the civilised drawing rooms of Jane Austen or the rural idylls of Constable. England was exhausted & nervous: dogged by Pitts war taxes mounting inflation & the lingering threat of a French invasion violence was rife particularly in rural communities where outsiders were regarded with deep suspicion. With a cast of characters straight out of Hardy " Damn His Blood" is a nail-biting true story of brutality greed & ruthlessness which brings an elusive society vividly back to life."