As the film company Hammer – famous as a purveyor of horror movies – moves into publishing, we hear from its boss Simon Oakes about the thinking behind the new venture, which has just produced its first literary title, The Greatcoat, Helen Dunmore.
Dunmore, an Orange prize-winning novelist, reads from her ghost story involving a dead second world war airman and a lonely young doctor's wife, and discusses the undying appeal of the supernatural to writers, ranging from Henry James's Turn of the Screw to Daphne du Maurier's Don't Look Now.
And film critic Peter Bradshaw joins us to investigate the history of the ghost story in literature and film, the latest product of which is Hammer's movie version of Susan Hill's The Woman in Black.
Reading list
The Greatcoat, by Helen Dunmore (Hammer Books)
