How did Hilary Spurling come to write her Whitbread-winning biography of Matisse? “My publisher was probably the only person in the world to realise that nobody had written a biography of Matisse and he suggested that I do it. I felt my heart leap – I assumed it had been done, and was thrilled it hadn’t. I was all wrong for it: I wasn’t an art historian, I wasn’t French and I am a woman. I thought these things would be a problem, but they helped.”