Barry Hines

Barry Hines's novel <i>A Kestrel for a Knave</i> adapted for the screen as <i>Kes</i> is one of the best-known and well-loved novels of the post-war period while his screenplay for the television drama <i>Threads</i> 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eight novels and nine screenplays between the 1960s and 1990s as well as writing eleven other works which remain unpublished and unperformed.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.