A military greatcoat had other uses besides today’s fashion look! (“I, Spy”, How To Spend It, February 1.) In a freezing cold winter in the early 1950s, east wind howling around the house, my father, ...

Recently, the military-style outerwear has taken on new meaning. Our critic traces shifting clothing connotations and offers advice on how to react. By Vanessa Friedman I find that after all that has ...

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The other day my son returned from Battersea car boot sale in triumph, wearing a greatcoat that he had bought ...

Just outside the town is an abandoned airfield from which Lancaster bombers used to fly over Germany. One day Isobel finds the greatcoat of the title – the kind of coat worn by RAF officers – stuffed ...

Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Helen Dunmore recently said that people are "always very surprised" when she tells them that she has written a novella for Hammer ...

In 1952, with England still suffering the aftershocks of WWII ("Shortages, restrictions, rules and ration books, coupons and exhortations..."), Isabel and her new husband Philip move to the ...

How the choice of outerwear for Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official, turned into part of the deportation story. By Vanessa Friedman The author has covered political image-making and its ...

Occasionally dubbed the ‘BOC’ (the ‘Big Ol’ Coat), the greatcoat is mighty. We’re talking full-length, heavyweight and military issue, made of dense wool plumes capable of repelling winter’s harshest ...

Nikoai Gogal ends his classic story, The Overcoat, with the dead clerk, Akaky, haunting St Petersburg stealing overcoats. In her new novella, Helen Dunmore continues this association of ghosts and ...

THE GREATCOAT By Helen Dunmore Atlantic Monthly Press, $24, 208 pages In “The Greatcoat,” a young pilot waiting at the window is the ghost of a war, a poignant symbol of the six years of combat that ...