Greg Davies: Looking For Kes

Comedian, actor and former English teacher Greg Davies is a lifelong fan of Barry Hines' classic novel A Kestrel For A Knave, the story of Billy Casper training a kestrel as an escape from his troubled home and school life.

In this film, Greg celebrates a novel that transformed how working class lives were portrayed in fiction. He travels to Barnsley to find out what today’s schoolkids make of the world depicted in the book, meets Barry Hines' brother Richard, who himself trained kestrels as a boy, and pays his own tribute to the book’s memorable football match.

He’ll explore how A Kestrel For A Knave helped inspire a generation of working-class writers - and discover why a simple story about a young boy befriending a bird continues to captivate readers more than 50 years after it was written.

Publicity contact: JH