A Kestrel For A Knave Barry Hines

Penguin Decades bring you the novels that helped shape modern Britain. When they were published, some were bestsellers, some were considered scandalous, and others were simply misunderstood. All represent their time and helped define their generation, while today each is considered a landmark work of storytelling. Barry Hines's A Kestrel for a Knave was published in 1968, and was made into one of the key British films of the sixties. Billy Casper is beaten by his drunken brother, ignored by his mother and failing at school. He seems destined for a hard, miserable life down the pits, but for a brief time, he finds one pleasure in life: a wild kestrel that he has raised and tamed himself.

The book offers a brief plot synopsis, a double-page graphic overview and insight into the text, a short introduction to major characters and themes and a who's who in the text - introducing a cameo icon for each major character. It explains major and minor themes in the texts - introducing thematic icons, gives a detailed commentary on the text, linked closely to the text for ease of reference, and features icons to enable flexible following of themes and characters. There is also a self-test quiz for each section, focusing on skills that will be required for coursework and exams and a checklist of important quotes. Guidance on structure and content of exam essays is given with examples of questions.

"This new stage adaptation of Barry Hines' well-known film and novel once again proves its gritty charm and popular staying power..." --Back cover.

The Heinemann Plays series offers contemporary drama and classic plays in durable classroom editions. Many have large casts and an equal mix of boy and girl parts. In this dramatization of Barry Hines's novel, 15-year-old Billy trains a kestrel for whom he learns to feel great affection.

Barry Hines’s novel A Kestrel for a Knave, adapted for the screen as Kes, is one of the best-known and well-loved novels of the post-war period, while his screenplay for the television drama Threads is central to a Cold War-era vision of nuclear attack. But Hines published a further eight novels and nine screenplays between the 1960s and 1990s, as well as writing eleven other works which remain unpublished and unperformed. This study examines the entirety of Hines’s work. It argues that he used a great variety of aesthetic forms to represent the lives of working-class people in Britain during the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and into the post-industrial conclusion of the twentieth century. It also makes the case that, as well as his literary flair for poetic realism, Hines’s authorial contributions to the films of his novels show the profoundly collaborative nature of these works.

SmartPass guides use full-cast drama to immerse students in the text, draw them into complex intelligent debate and train them to develop, express and support their own ideas with confidence.

A dramatisation of "A kestrel for a knave" by Barry Hines, with analysis of the work, and an examination of the lives of its principal characters and their social background.