A Kestrel For A Knave Kes

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.

"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eight novels and nine screenplays between the 1960s and 1990s, as well as writing eleven other works which remain unpublished and unperformed.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.

“There is no way but gentlenesse to redeeme a Hawke” Edmund Bert, 1619 Born and raised in the South Yorkshire mining village of Hoyland Common, Richard Hines remembers sliding down heaps of coal dust, listening out for the colliery siren at the end of shifts, and praying for his father's safe return. It seemed all too likely that he would follow in his father's footsteps and end up working in the pits, especially when to his mother's horror and his own he failed the 11+, so that unlike his older brother Barry, who had passed the exam to grammar school and who seemed to be heading for great things, Richard was left without hope of academic achievement. Crushed by this, and persecuted by the cruelty of his teachers, Richard spent his time in the fields and meadows just beyond the colliery slag heap. One morning, walking in the grounds of a ruined medieval manor, he came across a nest of kestrels. Instantly captivated, he sought out ancient falconry texts from the local library, and pored over the strange and beautiful language there. With just these books, some ingenuity, and his profound respect for the hawk's indomitable wildness, Richard learned to “man”, or train, his kestrel, Kes, and in the process grow into the man he would become. Richard and his experiences with kestrels inspired Barry's classic novel A Kestrel for a Knave. When production began on what would become Ken Loach's iconic film Kes, Richard found himself training the kestrels that would soar on screen and into cinematic history. No Way But Gentlenesse is a superb, moving memoir of one remarkable boy's love for a forgotten culture, and his attempt to find salvation in the natural world.

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Other, grade: keine, University of Rostock, course: Kulturwissenschaft: Representation of class in British Films since the 1930s, 5 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: In this paper I take a closer look at the movie Kes produced by Ken Loach. The movie is based on the book A Kestrel for a Knave which was written by Barry Hines. It is a pretty interesting story and by watching the movie the viewer automatically compares his own life and school experiences with Billys experiences. In the first part of this work I give a short introduction about the background and the situation in which the movie takes place. In the second part I take a closer look at Billys daily life, his future options and his relationship to his brother. [...]

"Challenging assumptions around Sixties stardom, the book focuses on creative collaboration and the contribution of production personnel beyond the director, and discusses how cultural change is reflected in both film style and cinematic themes."--Publisher description.

'Delightful . . . an original look at the literature inspired by Britain's birdlife' the Guardian, Best Nature Books of 2017 '[The] pages light up with feathered magic' Evening Standard When Alex Preston was 15, he stopped being a birdwatcher. Adolescence and the scorn of his peers made him put away his binoculars, leave behind the nature reserves and the quiet companionship of his fellow birders. His love of birds didn't disappear though. Rather, it went underground, and he began birdwatching in the books that he read, creating his own personal anthology of nature writing that brought the birds of his childhood back to brilliant life. Looking for moments 'when heart and bird are one', Preston weaves the very best writing about birds into a personal narrative that is as much about the joy of reading and writing as it is about the thrill of wildlife. Beautifully illustrated and illuminated by the celebrated graphic artist Neil Gower, As Kingfishers Catch Fire is a book to love and to hold, to return to again and again, to marvel at the way that authors across the centuries have captured the endless grace and variety of birds. It will make you look at birds, at the world, in a newer, richer light. 'A joyful and a wondrous book . . . Each bird illustrated by Gower in a mixture of gouache and watercolour that brings to mind both William Morris and Eric Ravilious' the Observer 'I can see it under the Christmas tree of every family with a bird feeder and a copy of the RSPB Handbook . . . Preston captures his birds beautifully' The Times

"The Cinema of Ken Loach: Art in the Service of the People examines the linking of art and politics that distinguishes the work of this leading British film director. Loach's films manifest recurrent themes over a long period of working with various collaborators, yet his handling of those themes has changed throughout his career. This book examines those changes as a way of reaching an understanding of Loach's style and meaning. It evaluates how Loach incorporates his political beliefs and those of his writers into his work and augments this thematic interpretation with contextual information gleaned from original archive research and new interviews."--BOOK JACKET.