Non-Fiction

In Persia, more than a thousand years ago, people developed the game of chess and encouraged the young to play it because they believed it helped them to think. It is a game where chance plays no part but you need a very good memory. A brief history of Chess. (640 words)

Wine comes in many different forms. Red, white and rosé, even ‘green’ wine, are all popular. For the wine lover, a good bottle is not only a drink, it is an art, perfection in a bottle. Wine has been been used in different ways for many years. This is wine's history (1,675 words)

When he was young, Stevenson was a disappointment to his family. He did not follow his grandfather and father into engineering, never worked as a doctor after studying medicine and did not share their Christian beliefs. However, during his short life he was, and is, a great success as a writer and was happy in love. (1,180 words)

The Kennedy family is a political dynasty in America. J. F. Kennedy was the much-loved President who was assassinated in the early ‘60s and his younger brother, Bobby, shared the same cruel end. Perhaps, Teddy Kennedy might well have become President but a strange incident involving the death of a young woman prevented him doing so. (1,315 words)

In many cities, like London, pigeons are seen as a pest but people and pigeons have a long history together. They were used to send messages and race over long distances and people still pay high prices for the most beautiful and fastest specimens. (1,170 words)

The Lusitania was an British ocean liner that the Germans sank in the First World War in 1915. More than 1,000 passengers, including women and children, many of them American, died. Two years later, it was part of the reason the USA entered the First World War. (515 words)

Yerba mate is a drink which originated in Latin America. It was so popular with the Catholic monks who came to the continent to spread their religion that they made the local Indians rich. But people were jealous of the Indians’ ability to grow the trees and a terrible war began. (920 words).

The twentieth century was a difficult time in South-east Asia: there was the Japanese war against China and many other countries; the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and the terrible civil war in Vietnam. Then, towards the end of the century, the leader of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia had millions of his own people killed in just three years. (725 words)

Trofim Lysenko cared more about his career and fame than he cared for science or for his people. He caused the deaths of many scientists who argued that he was wrong and let hundreds of thousands of people die of hunger. So, how did this scientist stay at the top of his profession for so long? (1,190 words)

This is the story of the great Zulu chief, who led his people to victory at a time when they had given up hope. Shaka Zulu was a clever and original military thinker but he lost the love of his people when his mother died and sadness drove him crazy. (1,050 words)

Ibn Battuta left his home in (what is now) Morocco many hundreds of years ago. He wanted to go to Mecca to do Haj as a good Muslim. He did not return for more than twenty years. He could not stop travelling. (370 words)

Britain in the early eighteenth century was a land of farms and fields but the Industrial Revolution changed the country for ever. James Watt, a Scottish inventor with only a little schooling, was the man that started it all. This is his story. (620 words)

The history of hair styles is interesting because it shows us that human beings always want something different. And it is not only women that spend a lot of money on their hair. For most of history, men have also worn their hair long and spent hours on making it look beautiful and unusual. (735 words)

The doctors told Francis Chichester that he had cancer and was going to die very soon. But Chichester decided to live his life very fast and very bravely. He learnt to sail and became the first person to sail around the world on his own. (315 words)

Faraday changed the world. He understood more about electricity than anybody who ever lived. Albert Einstein had a picture of Michael Faraday on his office wall. But Faraday was born poor. He never went to university and ate in the kitchen because his boss’ wife did not want to eat with him. (495 words)