High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Kind Hearts and Coronets is a 1949 British black comedy feature film. The plot is loosely based on the 1907 novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal by Roy Horniman, with the screenplay written by Robert Hamer and John Dighton and the film directed by Hamer. The film`s title derives from Tennyson`s 1842 poem Lady Clara Vere de Vere: "Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood."