This is the first full-length critical study of Barry Hines's writing. Hines's novel A Kestrel for a Knave (1968), 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novels and nine screenplays between the late 1960s and late 1990s, as well as writing eleven other works which remain unpublished and unperformed.
This study examines the entirety of Hines's work, arguing that he used a great variety...