A heart attack may have caused a head-on crash in which a prize-winning author died, an inquest heard yesterday.

Winfried Sebald, 57, novelist and professor of European literature at the University of East Anglia, was pronounced dead at the scene after his car collided with a tanker on December 14.

A postmortem examination revealed that although the cause of death was multiple injuries, Professor Sebald had "a serious heart condition" that he "may have been unaware of", Danielle Peat told the inquest at Norwich city hall.

The inquest heard that Prof Sebald set out from his home in Poringland, Norfolk, to drive to Norwich.

When negotiating a long sweeping left-hand bend on the A146 road his Peugeot car went directly into the path of an oncoming lorry.

In a statement read to the court a woman who was two cars behind the tanker said that she had noticed that the driver of the Peugeot had his head back facing the ceiling and that his body looked relaxed.

"He was making no effort to control the car."

Recording a verdict of accidental death, coroner William Armstrong said it was "likely that Prof Sebald had a heart attack and as a direct result the vehicle veered on to the wrong side of the road".

Prof Sebald had been tipped as a Nobel Prize winner for his novel The Emigrants.