Set in an unspecified mining area in Northern England, the book follows Billy Casper, a young working-class boy troubled at home and at school, who finds and trains a kestrel whom he names "Kes".

[1][2] Today, the novel is often used in Key Stage 4 assessment in the United Kingdom, as part of GCSE English courses.

[3] In medieval England, the only bird a knave (male servant, or man of low class) was legally allowed to keep was a kestrel.

His mother then tells him to go to the shop to get some cigarettes, but he instead steals a book from the local bookshop and returns home to read it.

After a very long lesson, which involves Billy performing acrobatics on the goalpost, the class goes back inside and each takes a shower.

After Billy intentionally lets in the winning goal to end the lesson, he is humiliated by Mr. Sugden, who forces him to take a cold shower.

He tries to hide from Jud and falls asleep before he bumps into Gryce, who reminds him that he is supposed to be in a Youth Employment Meeting.

However, the film version, directed by Kenneth Loach from Barry Hines's screenplay, dispenses with the flashbacks and portrays the events in a linear fashion.

Hines wanted to write a novel about the education system and took inspiration from his younger brother Richard, who had tamed a hawk called Kes.

[4] He wrote a first draft while teaching, but received a bursary from the BBC as a result of his successful radio play Billy's Last Stand, which he used to take a sabbatical on the Isle of Elba and complete the novel.

[5] Meanwhile, film and television producer Tony Garnett approached Hines about the prospect of contributing an episode to The Wednesday Play series.

Penelope Maslin noted Hines's "extraordinary visual sense ... subtlety and economy, added to an imagination quite out of the ordinary, which make A Kestrel for a Knave a book to remember.

"[5] In 2009, The Observer listed it as one of the "1000 novels everyone must read", describing it as a "compelling and haunting portrait of British working-class youth".

[6] In a 2010 retrospective review, Imogen Carter acclaimed "the novel's dazzling natural imagery, reminiscent of Seamus Heaney's 1966 poetry collection, Death of a Naturalist".

[7] Upon Hines's death in 2016, Barnsley-based poet Ian McMillan praised the novel for its "celebratory" presentation of the local dialect and culture, writing that "here in the former South Yorkshire coalfield A Kestrel for a Knave is our Moby-Dick, our Things Fall Apart, our Great Gatsby.