KindnessFable & folk tale
Androcles and the Lion
A runaway slave hiding in a desert cave meets a lion with a wounded paw. Years later, in a roaring arena in Rome, they meet again.
Kindness, Courage & Humanity
People helping strangers, standing up for others, showing compassion and doing the right thing.
For all ages · 12 stories
KindnessBiography
The Mother of Orphans
Thrown out of her home at twenty with a newborn baby, Sindhutai Sapkal survived by singing for food at railway stations. Then she began to take in other people's abandoned children.
KindnessTrue story
The Village That Hid Children
During the Second World War, the people of a poor mountain village in France opened their doors to strangers on the run. They hid thousands, and hardly ever spoke of it afterwards.
KindnessTrue story
The Visas of Chiune Sugihara
In the summer of 1940, a crowd of desperate refugees gathered at the gate of a small Japanese consulate in Lithuania. The diplomat inside had to choose between his orders and his conscience.
KindnessClassic retold
Two Old Men
Two old friends set off on foot on the long pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Only one of them gets there. Tolstoy's story of what it really means to keep a promise to God.
KindnessClassic retold
The Happy Prince
A golden statue who can see all the sorrow of his city asks a little swallow to give away his jewels and gold, one piece at a time. Oscar Wilde's tender fairy tale.
KindnessTrue story
The Man Who Saved 669 Children
In 1938 a young London stockbroker cancelled a skiing holiday and went to Prague instead. He told almost nobody what he did there, for fifty years.
KindnessTrue story
The Names in the Jar
In occupied Warsaw, social worker Irena Sendler helped smuggle Jewish children out of the ghetto, and buried their real names in jars so they could one day be found.
KindnessClassic retold
The Selfish Giant
A giant builds a wall to keep the children out of his beautiful garden. Then spring refuses to come. Oscar Wilde's fairy tale about a heart that opens.
KindnessClassic retold
The Bishop's Candlesticks
A hungry ex-convict, turned away by every inn, is welcomed by a kind old bishop, and repays him by stealing his silver. The famous scene from Victor Hugo's Les Misérables.
KindnessHistorical narrative
Carols in No Man's Land
At Christmas 1914, in the first winter of the First World War, soldiers on opposite sides of the trenches laid down their weapons and met as human beings, if only for a little while.
KindnessOriginal story
The Umbrella at Platform Four
One rainy morning, an old man left a spare umbrella at a station with a handwritten note. He had no idea what it would start.