Barry Hines

George Purse is an ex-steelworker employed as a gamekeeper on a ducal country estate. He gathers, hand-rears and treasures the birds to be shot at by his wealthy employers. He must ensure that the Duke and his guests have good hunts when the shooting season comes round on the Glorious Twelfth; he must ensure that the poachers who sneak onto the land in search of food do not. Season by season, over the course of a year, George makes his rounds. He is not a romantic hero. He is a laborer, who knows the natural world well and sees it without sentimentality. Rightly acclaimed as a masterpiece of nature writing as well as a radical statement on work and class, The Gamekeeper was also, like Hines's A Kestrel for a Knave (Kes), adapted by Hines and filmed by Ken Loach, and it too stands as a haunting classic of twentieth-century fiction.

The classic book that inspired Kes, the famous film, now published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 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.

Billy Casper is a fifteen-year-old with no future, growing up in poverty and seemingly destined to follow his older brother into a life of toil in the coal mines. Life at home is hard: his father has left, his mother's main interest is in picking up men at the pub, and his brother bullies him mercilessly. Nor are things better at school, where Billy is tormented by the other kids and treated as a troublemaker by the teachers. But a spark of hope enters Billy's lonely existence when he discovers a young kestrel hawk, Kes, and learns to train it. Billy gives to Kes all the love and devotion he has been denied, and in the hawk's silent strength and fierce independence he finds inspiration and the courage to survive. An enduring work of English fiction, Barry Hines's bestseller A Kestrel for a Knave (1968) has never been out of print in Great Britain, where both the book and Ken Loach's film adaptation Kes (1969) have long been regarded as classics. This edition, the first ever published in the United States, will allow American readers to discover this timeless and moving novel.

Billy Casper is a fifteen-year-old with no future, growing up in poverty and seemingly destined to follow his older brother into a life of toil in the coal mines. Life at home is hard: his father has left, his mother's main interest is in picking up men at the pub, and his brother bullies him mercilessly. Nor are things better at school, where Billy is tormented by the other kids and treated as a troublemaker by the teachers. But a spark of hope enters Billy's lonely existence when he discovers a young kestrel hawk, Kes, and learns to train it. Billy gives to Kes all the love and devotion he has been denied, and in the hawk's silent strength and fierce independence he finds inspiration and the courage to survive. An enduring work of English fiction, Barry Hines's bestseller A Kestrel for a Knave (1968) has never been out of print in Great Britain, where both the book and Ken Loach's film adaptation Kes (1969) have long been regarded as classics. This edition, the first ever published in the United States, will allow American readers to discover this timeless and moving novel. 'A masterpiece ... Billy Casper is as memorable a young character as any post-war writer has created.' - Glasgow Herald

A new adaptation of the classic book A Kestrel for a Knave, Kes tells the story of a day in the life of Billy Casper; a 15-year-old boy about to leave school and determined not to end up working down the pit like his older brother Jud. Billy doesn't know what he'll do, but one thing has changed his life forever, allowing him to soar above the narrow confines of his family and this town, his kestrel hawk, Kes. Kes is the story of Billy's heart. How it came to beat and how it came to break. The play was commissioned by Catherine Wheels Theatre Company.

A tried-and-tested stage adaptation of Barry Hines' novel A Kestrel for a Knave, about a troubled young boy who finds and trains a kestrel. Billy, a disaffected young boy, has problems at school and at home: he's neglected by his mother, beaten by his brother and bullied on all sides. He adopts a fledgling kestrel and treats it with all the tenderness he has never known. Slowly, he begins to see for the first time what he could achieve – if only he tried. Lawrence Till's adaptation of Barry Hines' 1968 novel retains its gritty charm and popular staying power. Kes was first performed at West Yorkshire Playhouse in 1999.

With prose that is every bit as raw, intense and bitingly honest as the world it depicts, Barry Hines's A Kestrel for a Knave contains a new afterword by the author in Penguin Modern Classics.Life is tough and cheerless for Billy Casper, a troubled teenager growing up in the small Yorkshire mining town of Barnsley. Treated as a failure at school, and unhappy at home, Billy discovers a new passion in life when he finds Kes, a kestrel hawk. Billy identifies with her silent strength and she inspires in him the trust and love that nothing else can, discovering through her the passion missing from his life. Barry Hines's acclaimed novel continues to reach new generations of teenagers and adults with its powerful story of survival in a tough, joyless world.Ken Loach's renowned film adaptation, Kes, has achieved cult status. In his new afterword, Barry Hines discusses his work to adapt the novel into a screenplay and reappraises the legacy of a book that has become a popular classic.Barry Hines (b. 1939) was born in the mining village of Hoyland Common, near Barnsley, South Yorkshire. Leaving Ecclesfield Grammar School without any qualifications, Hines worked as an apprentice mining surveyor for the National Coal Board before entering Loughborough Training College to study Physical Education. Working as a teacher in Hoyland Common, he wrote novels in the school library after work, later turning to writing full-time.If you enjoyed A Kestrel for a Knave, you might like The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories by Jack London, published in Penguin Classics.

A moving yet straightforward dramatisation of Barry Hines's popular novel, Kes, the story of how fifteen-year-old Billy Casper trains a kestrel. It is not the training of the young hawk that is important but the admiration and affection it inspires in Billy, feelings which neither his school nor his family offer.