My Saga

The Russians burst into our house, shouting "Razzia". They were checking for guns and ammunition but my grandmother thought they were after her sausages. "Quick! Hide them!" She gave me a stick laden with rings of Knackwurst, years old, to hide. So I put them in my bed!

This is the personal account of Karin Ashby's childhood growing up in East Germany during and immediately after the Second World War. It is full of anecdotes and stories that amuse, thrill and interest in equal measure and reflect the enterprising and creative person that is Karin Ashby.

“Probably a spy”.

I have heard this said, even within my own family! So it’s about time I tried to set the record straight. Russian has undoubtedly been an important feature of my life, but where did it all begin?

This is the story of the role the Russian language has played in the life of David Talks from National Service in the 1950s, through his years as a Russian interpreter in the Royal Naval Reserves, up to the present day.

Kenneth and Ethelreda awoke to find the ship rapidly approaching the coast of Japan. They dressed quickly and went up on deck to see an impressive coastline of rugged mountains sloping down to tree-covered hills at the water's edge.

What was it like to be an English Christian missionary in Japan in the years leading up to its involvement in the Second World War? Churches in Japan do not always know their own history, as during the War buildings were destroyed, records lost and people scattered. This is an account of the life of the Church in Japan in the 1930s based on the personal letters of Kenneth Sansbury.

"Dad, wake up. There are bullocks in the garden."

Three large black and white bullocks jostle outside my window. We run out. Bullocks are everywhere - and cow pats.

A landscape of wide open grazing marshes and dykes, as much sky as land, punctuated by windmills and the occasional clump of trees and a marshman's cottage floating in its midst. The ideal playground for four young boys let loose on its wide expanses. Our adventures seem if they come from the pages of Swallows and Amazons, but they were the reality of our childhood and the foundation of our adulthood.

And Japan, I thought,I shall go back to Japan. The idea was new, unexpected. Japan was the world of my childhood. It was nearly fifty years since the door had closed on that world, so abruptly, so absolutely, I had never imagined returning that way, pushing open that door and entering again that lost world.

The true story of an English family's experience of living in Japan during the years that have been called 'kurai tanima' or 'dark valley' - the dark valley that was to lead from Japan's invasion of Manchuria in September 1931 to the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

A translation into Japanese of A Tale of Two Japans.

Author, History graduate and entrepreneur, Martin believes in the power of stories and that none are more powerful than our own. He also grew those lemons.

Favourite saga: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

Graduate from the prestigious postgraduate creative writing programme at the University of East Anglia, Rufus is a published poet and coffee lover.

Favourite saga: Flaws in the Glass by Patrick White and The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald