[3][4][5][6] Before writing books, Clarke wrote comedy sketches for BBC Radio 4[7] and comic-book stories for the U.S. cartoonist and comics artist Gilbert Shelton.

Having graduated from Oxford University he spent several years working in Glasgow as a bilingual lexicographer for the dictionary firm HarperCollins.

[9] Later Clarke sold the rights to Transworld in the UK, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC in the United States, Penguin in Canada and Random House in Australia.

The fifth novel The Merde Factor about Paul West returning to Paris was published on 13 September 2012.

Stephen Clarke's second non-fiction offering, 1000 Years of Annoying the French,[13] was published in the United Kingdom on 18 March 2010.