Heart attack could have caused writer's fatal crash

The prize-winning author WG Sebald probably had a heart attack before crashing his car, an inquest was told yesterday.

Winfried Sebald was pronounced dead after his car collided with a tanker near his Norfolk home on 14 December. Dr Danielle Peat told the inquest at Norwich City Hall an examination showed the cause of death was multiple injuries but that he also had a serious heart condition he "may have been unaware of".

The author, 57, had set out from his home in Poringland to drive to Norwich, but as he negotiated a bend his car went into the path of an oncoming lorry. A woman driver behind the tanker said that Professor Sebald had his head back and "was making no effort to control the car".William Armstrong, the coroner, recorded a verdict of accidental death.

The Bavarian-born authortaught for 30 years at the University of East Anglia. He achieved fame in his last five years for works such asThe Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn. His final novel, Austerlitz, won The Independent's £10,000 Foreign Fiction Prize.