Barry Hines – author of the book that inspired the classic film KES
In the classic 60s film KES, Billy, a disaffected young lad living on a soulless Barnsley estate, uncovers a fledgling kestrel and for the first time in his life, feels his imagination stirred. After pinching a book on falconry from a local bookshop, Billy starts to train the bird.
The man behind the book ‘A Kestrel for a Knave’ on which the film was based was Barry Hines. As a young man in the 1950s Barry Hines was a keen footballer and regularly stood on the terraces of Oakwell to watch his local team, Barnsley, play. He was also a good enough player to attract a Manchester United scout to watch him, but nothing came from it and he later went off to play wing-back for Crawley Town. Keen to try his hand at writing, he picked football for his first book.
The Blinder was about a young footballer and Tony Garrett, who was then producing the Wednesday play for the BBC, read it and liked it. He asked Barry Hines if he’d consider writing a play for the Corporation. A big break, a lucky chance – not half, but Hines turned it down and told Garrett that he “had a book” he wanted to write.
It is probably just as well for all of us that Hines did decide to refuse the BBC’s initial offer, as otherwise the classic film ‘KES’ may never have seen the light of day. The official title of the book, which is often the only book some adults can remember, reading, and enjoying, during their school days in the 70s was ‘A Kestrel for a Knave’.
He left school at 15 years of age to become a mining surveyor but hated it and decided to go back to school and was able to get 2 ‘A’ levels. This enabled him to go to Loughborough University where he qualified as a P.E. teacher. After a couple of years living in London where those he met “had never heard anybody speak like me” it wasn’t long before he was back up to his beloved Yorkshire to start teaching at Hoyland Common in Barnsley.
“It was a working class school, the few middle class children in the village went off to other schools, but most of the kid’s dads worked down the pit”. A teacher during the day, Hines was busy scribbling away at night. He claims to have had “no sense of enjoying a book when I was a kid” and “The Bible was the only book I had read before I went to college”.
But Loughborough had introduced him to whole new world and he found himself in and out of the library just “taking books off the shelves, I had no idea what was good and what was bad.” He claims to have had no favourites but it was interesting to note he mentioned the Welsh literary genius Dylan Thomas as we chatted.
He started going to the theatre, watching foreign films, even “intellectual ones” and he started writing. “I started with short stories about working class life” because “it was all I knew.” He sent some of them to “a wonderful man” Alfred Bradley at the BBC in Leeds and he started to get one or two things on local radio. “I had a poem on the radio, it was fantastic – that was by Barry Hines, my name, well it should be as it was by me” he smiles.
By the time Tony Garnett had contacted him the radio had carried a few more pieces of his work. However with a young family to support it was still an incredibly brave decision to turn down a few thousand pounds for a TV play on the chance that a novel would earn anything like such a sum.
Tony Garnett speaking in 1999 said that the fact that Hines did turn him down “made me warm to him even more” and he told Hines that “when he finished the book” he would appreciate if “he would let me have a look at it”. When he did get the chance to read it he knew “as soon as I read it, I thought let’s do it.”
Garnett had rung Hines to tell him he was keen to turn the book into a film. Hines admits he was “naturally, very excited, it was fantastic” but “I thought ‘don’t count your chickens”.
He need not have worried Tony Garnett and Ken Loach took the train up from London to Sheffield, took the bus over to Barnsley and Hines took them on a tour of the local village. “We walked round the village, chatted and I felt at home with them straightaway”. Garnett and Loach were keen to get started.
Asked as to whether what was produced on film reflected what he’d written Hines reply was swift stating “yes, it did reflect what I wrote, it wasn’t a difficult book, and it wasn’t complex.” The film only had a small cast; it was shot in many of the streets Hines knew well. “It only took about 3-4 months to shoot, it was shot in and around Barnsley, and the school we used was in a suburb.” And the rest they say is history, as Billy with infinite patience starts to train the Kestrel. When it takes flight from his arm for the first time and returns to Billy’s wrist the sense of exhilaration is overwhelming.
David Bradley, at just 14 years of age is totally convincing as Billy, the late Brian Glover is the archetypal bullying sports teacher from that period and although it was only Ken Loach’s second cinema feature it probably remains as one of his finest pieces of work.
Asked about how many copies ‘A Kestrel for a Knave’ has sold Hines
admits to having “no idea” although he concedes it would be over a million.
It’s not his favourite piece of work however, that’s ‘Elvis over
Hines thinks that there are too many negative films being made at this current time although he admits that he liked ‘Trainspotting’ even though “it is savage”. He was unable to say who is currently his favourite writer saying there were “a few” but in response to his political hero’s they turned out to be Nelson Mandela and a Yorkshire boy like himself, Arthur Scargill.
Hines, as you’d expect is a cracking bloke, modest as hell and totally engaging. His appearance as a guest at the showing of KES in St Josephs Parish Hall in Millfield in Sunderland on Saturday November 15th should not be missed. Hines is one of a number of well-known figures due to appear at events in Sunderland during November as part of the Cities first ever Film Festival.
© Mark Metcalf