The Place That Knows Me

Richard Hines seemed destined for a life without academic achievement until he read TH White’s The Goshawk. And having then borrowed another falconry book from the library, he began to train Kes, the kestrel he found nesting in 16th-century ruins. Thus, as a teenager, began an obsession with hawks and a love of nature that – along with meeting his art student wife Jackie – took him in new directions... deputy head teacher, documentary maker, independent producer for the BBC and Channel 4, and university lecturer and writer among them. Richard’s schoolboy experiences and love of hawks inspired older brother Barry to write A Kestrel for a Knave, a novel that was soon turned into the much-loved and truly iconic 1969 film Kes, directed by Ken Loach. In 2016, the brothers’ upbringing in Hoyland Common, South Yorkshire, were turned by Richard into a factual book of his own: No Way but Gentlenesse: A Memoir of How Kes, My Kestrel, Changed My Life. But time moves on. Richard and Jackie are these days grandparents – and about to pull up their Yorkshire roots to live near their now grown-up son, daughter and granddaughter in Hove on the Sussex coast. Will their heritage let them go?

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