Barry Hines | |
|---|---|
| Born | Melvin Barry Hines (1939-06-30)30 June 1939 Hoyland, England |
| Died | 18 March 2016(2016-03-18) (aged 76) Hoyland, England |
| Education | Ecclesfield Grammar School |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Years active | 1966–2009 |
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-classNorthern England, particularly in his nativeWest Riding/South Yorkshire.
He is best known for the novelA Kestrel for a Knave (1968), which he helped adapt forKen Loach's filmKes (1969). He collaborated with Loach on adaptations of his novelsLooks and Smiles andThe Gamekeeper, and the 1977 two-part television dramaThe Price of Coal.
He also wrote the television filmThreads, which depicts the impact of a nuclear war onSheffield.
Hines was born in the mining village ofHoyland Common nearBarnsley,West Riding of Yorkshire. He attendedEcclesfield Grammar School after passing theeleven-plus in 1950 and playedfootball for the England Grammar Schools team.[1] After leaving school with fiveO levels he took a job with theNational Coal Board as an apprentice mining surveyor at Rockingham Colliery.[2] 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.[2][3]
After hisA levels, he studied for a teaching qualification atLoughborough College.[1][3] For his dissertation, Hines wrote a piece of creative fiction entitled "Flight of the Hawk", which later inspired his debut novelThe Blinder.[4] He worked as aPhysical Education teacher for several years, initially for two years in a Londoncomprehensive school and subsequently at Longcar Central School in Barnsley, where he wrote novels in the school library after the children had gone home.[1][2] He later became a full-time writer.[2]
Hines was a keen amateurfootballer who played forBarnsley's reserves and was invited to a trial atManchester United.[5] He later played forLoughborough College,Crawley Town andStocksbridge Works.[6][7] He also representedEngland Schoolboys.[8]
Hines' first published work was the playBilly's Last Stand, written while he worked as a PE teacher alongside his debut novel,The Blinder. A duologue between an impoverished coal miner and his manipulative business partner, it first appeared on BBC RadioThird Programme in 1965, withArthur Lowe andRonald Baddiley.[9][10]
The broadcast ofBilly's Last Stand found Hines a publisher forThe Blinder, which was published in 1966. It follows a gifted teenage footballer torn between his sporting career and his academic aspirations. The novel was partly based on Hines' own experiences playing youth football, as he had played forBarnsley FC's youth team and was offered trials atManchester United.[4]
The Blinder caught the attention of film and television producerTony Garnett. He approached Hines about the possibility of writing aWednesday Play for the BBC, but Hines told him he had "got this book going round my head and I need to write it".[11] He received a bursary from the BBC to take a sabbatical from his teaching work to write the novel on a retreat on the island ofElba. Garnett and Ken Loach, who had worked together on the Wednesday PlaysUp the Junction andCathy Come Home, read the manuscript to the unpublished novel and purchased the rights for their new production company Kestrel Films in July 1967.[4]
A Kestrel for a Knave was published in 1968. It tells the story of Billy Casper who was a troubled and neglected schoolboy living in a mining village who finds comfort in tending akestrel that he names 'Kes'. Hines was inspired by the experiences of his brother Richard, who tamed a hawk of the same name in his youth.[12] He co-wrote the script for the film versionKes (1969) withLoach and Garnett.Disney later offered to buy the rights on the condition that the downbeat ending, in which Billy's brother Jud kills the kestrel, be changed; Hines refused.[12] The film was shot on location around Hines' native Barnsley and Hoyland Common. Released in November 1969, it became a critical and commercial success and has subsequently become regarded as one of the greatest British films ever made.[13][14]
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. He adaptedBilly's Last Stand for the theatre in 1971, with the titular character played byIan McKellen, and publishedFirst Signs, a novel following a young expatriate in Italy returning to his northern hometown, in 1972. He contributed four scripts for the BBC'sPlay for Today strand; the first being "Billy's Last Stand" in 1971.
In 1975, Hines wroteThe Gamekeeper, a novel about a former steelworker who becomes a gamekeeper on a ducal estate, which he adapted tofilm with Loach in 1980. In 1976 Hines wrote a script for the BBC's 'Centre Play' anthology series titled "Two Men from Derby". Further collaborations with Loach in this period included the 1977 two-part television drama,The Price of Coal, again forPlay for Today. The first part, "Meet the People", follows a royal visit to a colliery while the second part, "Back to Reality", follows an accident that claims the lives of several pit workers.
The fourth and final collaboration with Loach wasLooks and Smiles, published as a novel in 1980 andadapted as film in 1981. Following the daily life of an unemployed 17-year-old in Sheffield, it began as a screenplay about teenage relationships, before the issue of unemployment became central to the narrative. It competed at theCannes Film Festival, winning the Young Cinema Award.[15] In these projects, Hines' involvement in the filmmaking process exceeded the typical expectations of a screenwriter; he was involved in casting decisions alongside Loach, attended shoots and participated in the editing process.[4]
In 1984, Hines wrote the script for the BAFTA award-winning TV filmThreads (1984), a speculative television drama examining the effects of nuclear war on Sheffield. The BBC had commissioned the drama and hiredMick Jackson to direct after he produced the Q.E.D. documentaryA Guide to Armageddon in 1982. Jackson hired Hines to write the screenplay because he wanted a social realist tone.[16] Hines focused the narrative on a young couple in Sheffield dealing with an unexpected pregnancy as the threat of nuclear exchange escalates. Although Sheffield was chosen due to its proximity to RAF bases and geographical centrality,[16] it also continued Hines' tradition of setting his work in and around South Yorkshire.
In contrast to the harmonious collaboration with Loach, 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 Hines spent on set.[16] However, the film was a critical success, winning aBAFTA award for Best Television Drama. Hines received a personal letter of praise from Labour leaderNeil Kinnock, and Jackson said that the film was viewed by PresidentRonald Reagan when it was broadcast on American television the following year.[17]
AfterThreads, Hines' output became more sporadic. In the early 1990s, he wrote two television plays about football;Shooting Stars, about three friends who hold a local star striker to ransom, was broadcast onChannel 4 in 1990, andBorn Kicking, about the first professional female footballer, was broadcast onBBC1 in 1992. His penultimate novel,The Heart of It, was published in 1994 and returned to the subject of coal mining, depicting a Hollywood screenwriter returning home to visit his father, a communist former miner and veteran of the1984–85 miners strike. In 2003, Loach was in contact with Hines about adapting the novel for film, but Hines refused because he felt "the ideas had gone stale".[18]
His final novel wasElvis Over England, published in 2000 to mixed reviews; it follows a road trip undertaken by an unemployedElvis fanatic who undertakes a road trip toPrestwick, Scotland, the only place Elvis Presley ever set foot in the UK.
In 2009, after Hines' diagnosis ofAlzheimer's disease prevented him from further writing, Pomona Books publishedThis Artistic Life, an anthology of previously unpublished short stories mostly written around the time ofA Kestrel for a Knave.[19]
According to Dave Gibson, Hines' work is "characterised by his ear for dialogue, his sympathetic use of Barnsley dialect and his identification with working-class struggles".[20] His writing has been described associal realist. Imogen Carter notes thatA Kestrel for a Knave features "dazzling natural imagery, reminiscent ofSeamus Heaney's 1966 poetry collection,Death of a Naturalist."[21]
Hines's work frequently addressed contemporary British social issues, such aseducation in A Kestrel for a Knave,unemployment in Looks and Smiles, and working conditions and industrial action in the mining industry inThe Price of Coal andThe Heart of It.Football appears extensively in his writing; 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.[22]
Hines' work has received significant recognition.Kes won a number of awards, including a Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award for Best British Screenplay and a BAFTA nomination for Best Screenplay.[23]
Threads (1984) won a special award at the 1985Monte-Carlo Television Festival, theBroadcasting Press Guild Award in 1985 for Best Single Drama, and was nominated for seven different awards in the 1985BAFTA Awards, winning the Best Single Drama award.[24][25]
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. Some of his readers claimed thatA Kestrel for a Knave was the only book they had ever read.[12] Ian McMillan wrote that "here in the former South Yorkshire coalfieldA Kestrel for a Knave is ourMoby-Dick, ourThings Fall Apart, ourGreat Gatsby."[26]
Hines was awarded an honorary degree at theUniversity of Loughborough in July 2009 and an Honorary Doctorate (Doctor of Letters) at theUniversity of Sheffield on 14 January 2010.[27] In 2008, his personal archive was donated to the university, where it is now part of the Library Special Collections.
Upon his death, he received tributes from literary and political figures.Tony Parsons described him as "inspirational" andBarnsley Central MPDan Jarvis described him as "a brilliant writer".[28] Ken Loach wrote "he loved language and his ear for dialect and its comedy was pitch perfect."[29]
Hines married twice, and is survived by two children from his first marriage.[12]
After spending much of his later life in Sheffield, he returned to a care home in his home village of Hoyland Common after a diagnosis ofAlzheimer's disease. He died on 18 March 2016 at the age of 76.[30]
