All Articles

A young man seems certain to be arrested and hanged for the murder of a retired builder but Sherlock Holmes believes he is innocent. Can he save him? (4,500 words)

Today, many people cannot enjoy football because of the dangerous fans that go to matches. They often don’t go to watch the match but to fight. But football has always been a dangerous game. It is not a new thing. Read about the history of football and the problems it has made (500 words).

Drifting is an international motor sport that started in Japan. It is popular in Saudi Arabia although it is illegal and very dangerous. (330 words)

A young girl wants her father to tell her a story so he tells her one about the little girl who asked Father Christmas to make it Christmas every day. He agrees but the result does not make the little girl as happy as she expected! (1,875 words)

In this story, Sherlock Holmes tries to understand why a man pays a music teacher double the usual salary to teach a small girl but also wear someone else’s clothes and cut her hair short. Can it be that her employer’s wife is so strange that she can only be with someone dressed like this or is there a deeper mystery that only the legendary detective can solve? (4,275 words)

This short article looks at the Vikings, farmers from Scandinavia – especially Norway and Sweden – who became sailors because they needed to fish to get extra food more than a thousand years ago. The Vikings travelled all over Europe – to Britain, France, even as far as Turkey – and made all the continent afraid of them. They were great soldiers but also very bloody. (540 words)

Andrew Barton Paterson was a lawyer but his true love was the Australian countryside, called 'the outback'. His stories are usually about farmers, their animals and the hard life of living far from neighbours and friends. He is perhaps Australia's best-known writer. This is the story of his life. (810 words)

Bengal tigers are the biggest in the world but we need to protect them and not take the land where they live (170 words).

It was Christmas 1914 and thousands of German, French and British soldiers were sitting in fields across Belgium. It was the first winter of the First World War and they wanted to be at home with their families. So they stood up and started playing football and singing songs together. (410 words)

Football is now big business but in the late nineteenth century, football clubs could not pay their players. Football was a game for people who liked sport as a hobby – not as a job. William Sudell man changed that but he also went to prison because of it. (660 words)

There is nothing more exciting than watching a football match with thousands of excited fans all around you. But sometimes, a great day at a football match ends in sadness and death. This story tells you about some of the worst accidents in football history (895 words).

There are myths in the Philippines and Vietnam about humanity coming from a part of the bamboo plant. In China, the bamboo’s strength and beauty are used to show the idea of a gentleman. Bamboo has practical uses too: for food, for building and more. And then there's the plague of rats that often accompanies its flowering! (1,040 words).

This tragic tale describes the remorse that a young widow feels when she looks back on how she treated her husband and her regret at having longed for another man. It is moral tale, subtly weaved together, that suggests we do not always benefit from what we crave. (5,310 words)

In this story, the great Russian socialist writer, Maxim Gorky tells us the surprising tale of a student living in the same house as a sex worker. Although she is very hard and rude, Gorky lets us know a secret about her: she writes letters to a boyfriend back in her hometown. But who is this young man that she loves so much? (1,500 words)

Katherine Mansfield lost her brother in The First World War and this story explores the feelings of two fathers whose sons were killed in that terrible conflict. She considers their different reactions and uses the struggles of an unlucky fly to make her dramatic point. (1,860 words)