About Barry Hines
Melvin Barry Hines, FRSL (30 June 1939 – 18 March 2016) was an English author, playwright and screenwriter. His novels and screenplays explore the political and economic struggles of working-class Northern England, particularly in his native West Riding/South Yorkshire. He is best known for the novel A Kestrel for a Knave (1968), which he helped adapt for Ken Loach's film Kes (1969). He collaborated with Loach on adaptations of his novels Looks and Smiles and The Gamekeeper, and the 1977 two-part television drama The Price of Coal. He also wrote the television film Threads, which depicts the impact of a nuclear war on Sheffield. == Early life == Hines was born in the mining village of Hoyland Common near Barnsley, West Riding of Yorkshire. He attended Ecclesfield Grammar School after passing the eleven-plus in 1950 and played football for the England Grammar Schools team. After leaving school with five O levels he took a job with the National Coal Board as an apprentice mining surveyor at Rockingham Colliery. A neighbour he chanced to meet at the coal face disapproved of his failure to meet his potential; Hines later said that was when he decided to return to school to take four A-levels. After his A levels, he studied for a teaching qualification at Loughborough College.
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