Discovering Kes: A Personal Quest for the Classic 1969 Film

Whoever could have guessed that a Ken Loach film produced on a low budget, with no big stars, no sex, little violence, the wrong kind of bird and with a sad ending, could ever have resulted in a major classic, loved by millions. Such was the case with Kes, which resulted from the 1968 Barry Hines novel A Kestrel for a Knave.

Kes was one of those rare films which concerned the working class and highlighted some of their life struggles and was enshrined in the life of Barnsley schoolboy, Billy Casper.

The author was a falconer at the time, and now 55 years later Discovering Kesis a tribute to all things Kes from how the film came about, to its production, anecdotes, impact on society (then and now) and not least the tracking down of the filming and associated locations along with maps which enable like-minded people to follow in his footsteps.