Martin Cloake was born in London in 1965 and has lived and worked in the city all his life. Books and the written word have played a large part in his experiences. A voracious reader, he worked for two years as a library clerk before studying history and industrial relations at college. After gaining a degree, Martin went to work in magazine publishing and has been a writer and editor for a wide variety of titles for over nearly 30 years. A follower of his local team Tottenham Hotspur since he was seven years old, Martin avoided writing about sport for years, preferring to keep work and leisure separate. But in the late 1980s the emerging football fanzine movement drew him in, and he began contributing to When Saturday Comes and original Spurs fanzine The Spur. He later set up and edited his own fanzine, Off the Shelf, for two years, continuing to contribute articles on football to a range of titles.In 2004, along with co-author Adam Powley, he published his first book. We Are Tottenham was described by the legendary writer and journalist Hunter Davies as "the kind of book every football club should have". Since then, the pair have written a number of books on Spurs, including the best-selling Spurs Miscellany series and the acclaimed profile of the great Spurs side of the early 1980, The Boys from White Hart Lane. Martin was consultant editor on the epic Tottenham Opus, commissioned to mark the club's 125th anniversary. In 2011, along with Adam Powley and WSC art editor Doug Cheeseman, he wrote and produced 61 - The Spurs Double, which was named Illustrated Sports Book of the Year at the National Sporting Club awards. Martin has also contributed to a number of general football titles, had work featured in The Blizzard, Sabotage Times, In Bed With Maradona and The Football Pink. He wrote extensively about the business of football for AOL Money and wrote a regular blog on the business of sport and sports culture for the New Statesman website. He continues to contribute to a variety of print and online publications. His self-published ebooks are available through his blog and website.His latest book, A People's History of Tottenham Hotspur, has been written with alongside Alan Fisher, who writes the respected Spurs fan blog Tottenham On My Mind.