This September, Christopher Eccleston narrates A Kestrel for a Knave for BBC Four’s The Read. Stephen James-Yeoman discusses the enduring power of this classic countryside book
Stephen James-Yeoman is commissioning editor of The Read as well as other BBC Arts and Classical Music programmes, such as the BBC Proms.
For more than 30 years from the mid-1960s, BBC storytelling programme Jackanory featured the stars of the day, from Kenneth Williams to Bernard Cribbins, reading stories aloud – with the counterintuitive aim of encouraging young viewers to actually stop watching those square TVs and pick up a book instead.
Now, almost 30 years later, the spirit of the series lives on in BBC Four’s The Read, this time reimagined to introduce adults to iconic British novels. Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners, Bruce Chatwin’s On The Black Hill and Louise Levine’s A Vision of Loveliness have all been given this fresh treatment and now it’s the turn of Barry Hines’ seminal work A Kestrel for a Knave.
Filmed at Oldham Colliseum Theatre, Christopher Eccleston is the narrator and he himself acknowledges the impact Hines’ coming-of-age novel has had on him.
“If I hadn’t met Barry Hines’ Billy Casper from the extraordinarily beautiful novel A Kestrel For a Knave, I would have cared less about other people and I would not be an actor,” he said.
It’s easy to see why this book, first published in 1968, has such a profound effect on those who encounter it. Billy Casper’s life in a South Yorkshire mining village is bleak; he is ridiculed and bullied at home and at school. The calming open fields of a nearby farm represent the blessed relief from his life’s difficulties and the freedom Billy feels when connecting with his beloved kestrel, Kes.
A Kestrel for a Knave is known as much as a staple school text as for Ken Loach’s devastating 1969 film, Kes. In The Read, Eccleston brilliantly guides the viewer through the heart-breaking cadence of Billy’s life as he grapples with his harsh day-to-day existence. As narrator, the actor gives voice to Billy, to his overpowering brother Jed, their world-weary Mum and caring but frustrated teacher Mr Farthing, skilfully painting the claustrophobic world the teenager occupies.
It’s the freedom that Billy finds training his newly found kestrel that underpins Hines’ narrative. The passion of falconry is palpable when the schoolboy demonstrates his newfound skills to his teacher in the farm’s fields. The confidence he has in his own ability and the connection to the young kestrel gives the reader hope tha
