Sophie Gee

Exactly.

And I suppose the only thing to add to this is that a Kestrel for a day of the story, well, the football scene is obviously inspired by Barry Hines' own illustrious football career.

He sort of turns it on its head and has a ridiculous football sequence.

But Hines' brother, Richard, actually did find and tame a wild Kestrel when they were children.

And, in fact, the Hines boys seem to have grown up in quite a loving family.

train a kestrel because you can't tame them you can only train them oh did i say tame i meant to say train you're so right oh my goodness yes no it's not a pet and you can't train that you can't tame them he trained the kestrel otherwise i think that the casper household and the heinz household were not similar um the the barry heinz seems to have grown up in a very loving household and been very close to his father and his brother

Oh, and the other thing I wanted to say is that, you know, for people outside the UK, and I include Australia in this when I was growing up and into my 20s, we didn't know this novel at all.

And the sort of mining towns of Yorkshire and the Midlands really only came onto the map through films like Billy Elliot, the ballet dancing film.

And actually I was thinking about The Full Monty.

which is set in Sheffield.

It's organized around steel worker strikes and their commentary on the sort of the fate of these forgotten parts or these marginalized parts of England during Margaret Thatcher's period in power.

But it's really important to note that KESS or Kess or Frenave, they're set before the kind of mass strikes and the closing of the pits, but already the coal industry is under enormous pressure.

It's a dying industry.

And that sense of fragility and impermanence and the sense of what are we going to do with our future?

What will the jobs be?

How are we going to become qualified to have any kind of foothold in the world looms over the whole block.

So it's sort of making this book sound a little bit depressing.

And it's so important to say that it's absolutely not.

It's funny.

It's brilliant.