Did you find out anything that surprised you?

There was so much - her relationship and the depth of her relationship with the Duke of Westminster, her friendship with Winston Churchill, her role during the war, the fact that she may have had a son, her fluency in English, her time in Scotland...

Chanel’s surname was mis-spelt on her birth certificate. Did that make it difficult to uncover much of her early life?

Yes it was difficult to unravel because she felt great shame being illegitimate and growing up in an orphanage (after her mother died her father abandoned her and her two sisters and she was brought up by nuns at Aubazine Abbey).

There was a lot of speculation over Coco Chanel having a Nazi lover?

The man she had an affair with half English. He was an officer at the German office in Paris before the war. The affair was very complicated.

Did your view of Coco change during the writing of the book?

By the end I felt that she was really heroic, that she had a capacity to go on working when most people would give up, that in the face of heartbreak and adversity, and intense criticism she kept going. I think when I started all I knew really was the surface image of Coco Chanel.

She had many lovers do you think she regretted not getting married?

She certainly said so at the end of her life, which surprised me because she was associated with feminism and liberation. But nevertheless she felt in old age that her life had been lacking something by not marrying.

Coco Chanel The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie, HarperCollins, £25

For more information on Justine Picardie view justine-picardie.blogspot.com

Legendary Coco Chanel revealed