A Kestrel for a Knave

The powerful novel which inspired one of the most famous British films of the 60s, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time

Barry Hines’s A Kestrel for a Knave was published in 1968, and was made into one of the key British films of the sixties. Billy Casper is beaten by his drunken brother, ignored by his mother and failing at school. He seems destined for a hard, miserable life down the pits, but for a brief time, he finds one pleasure in life- a wild kestrel that he has raised and tamed himself.