27 Facts About Barry Hines

Melvin Barry Hines, FRSL was an English author, playwright and screenwriter.

Barry Hines is best known for the novel A Kestrel for a Knave, which he helped adapt for Ken Loach's film Kes.

Barry Hines 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.

Barry Hines wrote the television film Threads, which depicts the impact of a nuclear war on Sheffield.

Barry Hines attended Ecclesfield Grammar School after passing the eleven-plus in 1950 and played football for the England Grammar Schools team.

Barry Hines worked as a Physical Education teacher for several years, initially for two years in a London comprehensive school and subsequently at Longcar Central School in Barnsley, where he wrote novels in the school library after the children had gone home.

Barry Hines was a keen amateur footballer who played for Barnsley's reserves and was invited to a trial at Manchester United.

Barry Hines later played for Loughborough College, Crawley Town and Stocksbridge Works.

Barry Hines' first published work was the play Billy's Last Stand, written while he worked as a PE teacher alongside his debut novel, The Blinder.

Barry Hines approached Hines about the possibility of writing a Wednesday Play for the BBC, but Hines told him he had "got this book going round my head and I need to write it".

Barry Hines received a bursary from the BBC to take a sabbatical from his teaching work to write the novel on a retreat on the island of Elba.

Barry Hines was inspired by the experiences of his brother Richard, who tamed a hawk of the same name in his youth.

Barry Hines co-wrote the script for the film version Kes with Loach and Garnett.

Barry Hines continued writing novels, plays and television scripts throughout the 1970s, with much of his output centring on the tensions of labour and industry that characterised British society at the time.

Barry Hines adapted Billy's Last Stand for the theatre in 1971, with the titular character played by Ian McKellen, and published First Signs, a novel following a young expatriate in Italy returning to his northern hometown, in 1972.

In 1975, Barry Hines wrote The Gamekeeper, a novel about a former steelworker who becomes a gamekeeper on a ducal estate, which he adapted to film with Loach in 1980.

In 1984, Barry Hines wrote the script for the BAFTA award-winning TV film Threads, a speculative television drama examining the effects of nuclear war on Sheffield.

Jackson hired Barry Hines to write the screenplay because he wanted a social realist tone.

Barry Hines focused the narrative on a young couple in Sheffield dealing with an unexpected pregnancy as the threat of nuclear exchange escalates.

In contrast to the harmonious collaboration with Loach, Barry Hines had a strained relationship with Jackson; according to his wife Eleanor, he disliked Jackson due to his class background while Jackson was frustrated by the amount of time Barry Hines spent on set.

Barry Hines received a personal letter of praise from Labour leader Neil Kinnock, and Jackson said that the film was viewed by President Ronald Reagan when it was broadcast on American television the following year.

In 2003, Loach was in contact with Barry Hines about adapting the novel for film, but Barry Hines refused because he felt "the ideas had gone stale".

Football appears extensively in his writing; Barry Hines recalled that being told he "knew what the game was all about" by a professional footballer was one of the best critiques he had received.

Barry Hines claimed he took no pleasure in receiving awards; his main concern was the approval of working-class readers and the confirmation that they had been represented accurately.

Barry Hines was awarded an honorary degree at the University of Loughborough in July 2009 and an Honorary Doctorate at the University of Sheffield on 14 January 2010.

Barry Hines married twice, and is survived by two children from his first marriage.

Barry Hines died on 18 March 2016 at the age of 76.