A Kestrel For A Knave

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 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.

Billy Casper has nowhere to go and nothing to say, but he is determined not to work down the mines. His family and friends are mean and tough, and are sure that he is heading for trouble. His only companion is his kestrel, trained from the nest but, like Billy, untamed.

This book explores British cinema in relation to its social political and cultural contexts. Each chapter deals with a specific topic and includes close readings of key films from different historical periods. Demonstrating the richness and variety of a national cinema that has traditionally struggled to define itself between the paradigms of Hollywood popular film and European art cinema, British Film provides comprehensive coverage of British cinema and detailed discussion of specific films that can be used in tandem with screenings.

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

Highlights the importance of regional consciousness in British literature in the Victorian and modern periods.

This volume traces transitions in British literature from 1960 to 1980, illuminating a diverse range of authors, texts, genres and movements. It considers innovations in form, emergent identities, changes in attitudes, preoccupations and in the mind itself, local and regional developments, and shifts within the oeuvres of individual authors.

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.

Presented in a clear and accessible way, the 'Key Stage 3 Success Workbooks' cover everything students need to know for Key Stage 3, providing different styles of questions to test students' knowledge on any given subject.

This account traces the phenomenon of class from the medieval to the postmodern period, examining its relevance to analysis. It shows the role of class in literary constructions of the social, and the relations between class and culture.

In this introduction to post-war fiction in Britain, Dominic Head shows how the novel yields a special insight into the important areas of social and cultural history in the second half of the twentieth century. Head's study is the most exhaustive survey of post-war British fiction available. It includes chapters on the state and the novel, class and social change, gender and sexual identity, national identity and multiculturalism. Throughout Head places novels in their social and historical context. He highlights the emergence and prominence of particular genres and links these developments to the wider cultural context. He also provides provocative readings of important individual novelists, particularly those who remain staple reference points in the study of the subject. Accessible, wide-ranging and designed specifically for use on courses, this is the most current introduction to the subject available. An invaluable resource for students and teachers alike.

"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.

In Wild Things Jack Halberstam offers an alternative history of sexuality by tracing the ways in which wildness has been associated with queerness and queer bodies throughout the twentieth century. Halberstam theorizes the wild as an unbounded and unpredictable space that offers sources of opposition to modernity's orderly impulses. Wildness illuminates the normative taxonomies of sexuality against which radical queer practice and politics operate. Throughout, Halberstam engages with a wide variety of texts, practices, and cultural imaginaries—from zombies, falconry, and M. NourbeSe Philip's Zong! to Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are and the career of Irish anticolonial revolutionary Roger Casement—to demonstrate how wildness provides the means to know and to be in ways that transgress Euro-American notions of the modern liberal subject. With Wild Things, Halberstam opens new possibilities for queer theory and for wild thinking more broadly.

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.