Best Selling Author

Martin Daley

Martin was born in Carlisle, Cumbria. He earned his MA with Teesside University during a successful working career which culminated in him running his own business. His thirty-year writing career began when he was researching the life and military career of his inspirational great-great grandfather Isaac Scott. Isaac was a soldier during the nineteenth century and in For Queen and Cumberland, Martin tells his story and that of two other ancestors from working class backgrounds who joined the army to fight in foreign wars. The book was followed by Anonymous Heroes, set against the First World War, which also links the author’s family history, with the wider social, political and military history that most people are familiar with.

Martin’s eclectic taste in reading ranges from Charles Cumming to Bill Bryson; from Amy Lawrence to Simon Schama. ‘As I am an avid reader of period works – my favourite literary characters being Sherlock Holmes and John Watson – I would have to include Doyle, Christie, Dickens and Wodehouse in that list too. Although Holmes and Watson may be my favourite individual characters, my ‘desert island’ book would be Alexandra Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. It has it all: action, adventure, romance, intrigue, betrayal. It’s just a fantastic book that I keep going back to.’

Another inspiration for Martin is his home city and its history, which always features heavily in his books, whether fiction or non-fiction. The Adventure of the Spanish Drums is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche predominantly set in Carlisle. In the ‘Spanish Drums’, he introduces his own detective, Inspector Cornelius Armstrong. The first volume of Armstrong’s own adventures was published in 2011. In the same year, Martin became a member of the Crime Writers’ Association.

Summer 2012 saw the publication of Fourth, First & Fulham – Martin’s take on Carlisle United’s golden era in the 1960s and 70s. His second book on Carlisle United followed in 2014. It tells the story of their adventure in the 1951 F.A. Cup, an event that saw the whole city swept away with the romance of a glamour tie against the mighty Arsenal.

It was then that he was contacted by Story Terrace and invited to become one of their ghost-writing team. Since joining the team, he has ghost-written several books, as diverse as the career of a special forces soldier to the life of a woman born and raised during the Chinese Civil War. He was made one of Story Terrace’s Premium Writers in 2019.

Martin lives with his wife Wendy in South West Scotland.