Barry Hines, the author behind much-loved classic Kes, has died at 76

The 76-year-old was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2009 and died on Friday with his family at his side in a care home in South Yorkshire.

His friend, the poet and radio presenter Ian McMillan, said his best-known work – his moving story of a troubled boy who finds solace in raising a pet kestrel – was “Barnsley’s defining myth”.

Tom Hines, his son, said the family were extremely proud of him and had been greatly touched by the outpouring of affection from his fans and the messages of condolence, which “made us realise how important some his work has been over the years”.

He said: “He died very peacefully, which is a blessing given that he has had a long battle with Alzheimer’s over the last few years.

“We have been very proud of the books that he has written and the films that have come out of that.”

Tom added: “He was a very thoughtful man, he was very kind and he was also very funny, and I think that humour that he had and that he appreciated often came out in his work as well.

“His work was in some sense very serious but it also had a humorous side to it as well and that was really part of his overall character. We are very proud of him as a person and proud of the work that he did, and he will be very sadly missed.”

Barry wrote nine novels over a career that spanned almost 50 years, but it was his second book, A Kestrel For A Knave, that brought him to public prominence.

Written in 1968, it was adapted into the highly-acclaimed Ken Loach film Kes, ranked seventh in the British Film Institute’s top 10 British films

Among the tributes following his death was one from actress Kathy Burke, who called him “our generation’s JK (Rowling)”.

Joanne Harris, who wrote the novel Chocolat, said she “hated and loved him at the same time – for writing the world I saw every day, and for giving me hope to escape it”, while author Jonathan Coe said he “leaves a great legacy”.

Barry was born in 1939 in Hoyland Common, a small mining village outside Barnsley, and his work put the South Yorkshire town on the cultural map.

A pupil at Ecclesfield Grammar School in Sheffield, he was more focused on football than his books, making the England Grammar Schools team and playing for Barnsley B team as a young man.

He left without any qualifications and joined the National Coal Board as an apprentice mining surveyor.

But after six months a neighbour persuaded him to return to his studies and he eventually trained as a teacher at Loughborough College, teaching PE in London and South Yorkshire. It was at college that he finally found his calling.

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Tom said: “My father actually borrowed a book on a rainy day from a friend, I think it was a George Orwell book. He wasn’t a big reader up to that point and that sort of lit the spark and his love of literature.”

He started writing his own novels when he was a teacher, writing in the evenings in a school library after pupils had gone home.

He had two children, Tom, now 47 – whom he took to watch Sheffield United and Test cricket matches – and Sally, 48, with his first wife Margaret, and had a partner, Jean Penchion for 12 years in the 1970s and 1980s, before marrying Eleanor.

Among his works was The Blinder – his first novel, published in 1966 – about a gifted young footballer, and he also wrote the screenplay for the 1984 TV drama Threads, which imagined the chilling effect of a nuclear attack in Sheffield and won a Bafta award.

But it is for A Kestrel For A Knave that he will remain best-known and loved.

The book was inspired by the experiences with kestrels as a child of his younger brother Richard, who recently published his own memoir.

Considered a modern classic, it has for years been widely taught in schools as a set text.

Ian said it had an enormous impact on Yorkshire writers, telling the BBC: “It was our Moby Dick. It taught us that people from around here can write, that the places we live in can be fit places for literature.”

Speaking about his novel to Yorkshire’s On:Magazine four years ago, Barry said: “I think that I painted an accurate picture of what life was like for someone like Billy 40 years ago. Looking back, maybe I was not as sympathetic as I could have been to some of the adult characters…”

He also spoke of the responsibility he felt to the people of Yorkshire and the areas he so often wrote about, saying: “The main thing for me is to feel that I have represented them well.”