Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author's brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.

In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted 'Top Tens' across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?

The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme. Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature.

Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something.

It may well be that Empire has raised generations of its Nation's kin abroad. And some, born abroad, adopted England as their home in preference to their own. For both this lure of 'Home' has nourished their ambition whilst all around them stories are to be found that they, with their unique outsider's view, can create and deliver to our ears their literary masterpieces.

1 - The Top 10 - The English. Born Abroad - An Introduction

2 - The Informer by Joseph Conrad

3 - The Interlopers by Saki the pseudonym for H H Munro

4 - The Phantom Rickshaw by Rudyard Kipling

5 - Major Wilbraham by Hugh Walpole

6 - A Little Dinner At Timmin's by William Makepeace Thackeray

7 - The Story of the RipplingTrain by Mary Louisa Molesworth

8 - The Mysterious Death on the Underground Railroad by Baroness Emmuska Orczy

9 - A Little Holiday by Oswald Sickert

10 - A Resurrection by H B Marriott Watson

11 - Amour Dure - Part 1 by Violet Paget writing as Vernon Lee

12 - Amour Dure - Part 2 by Violet Paget writing as Vernon Lee