Helen Dunmore will be talking about the power of the past to imprint itself on the present, until the present is possessed by the past, and discussing her new book The Greatcoat, a ghost story set during and after the Second World War. Dunmore is a poet, novelist and children’s writer.  Among other awards her work has received the Orange Prize for Fiction, the McKitterick Prize and the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award. Her poem The Malarkey won the 2010 National Poetry Competition.