My first book was published in 1980, three years after a first article on computing and history. In the intervening years, I have published seventy-eight books in one format or another, over fifty articles on history and teaching history, have written radio and television programmes and acted as an editor for two Cambridge University Press series–Perspectives in History and Topics in History–and was part of the research team of the Teaching of History Project 1985-1987.   My Three Rebellions: Canada 1837-1838, South Wales 1839 and Victoria, Australia 1854 was published early in 2010. Famine, Fenians and Freedom 1840-1882 was published in November 2011 and a broader study called Resistance and Rebellion in the British Empire, 1600-1980 completed my trilogy on colonial resistance to the British Empire and was published in December 2012. The Rebellion Trilogy is considered in greater detail on my website and on a podcast Second editions of what has become the Rebellion Quartet were published in 2017 and 2018 in print and Kindle versions. The final volume of Ireland 1882-1922 was published in 2023 

In addition to the Rebellion Quartet, I have published two volumes on Rebellion in Canada, 1837-1885, two similar volumes on Settler Australia, 1780-1880, and ‘A Peaceable Kingdom’, a volume of essays on nineteenth century Canada, and Canada's 'Wars of Religion'.

My Kindle series on Nineteenth Century British Society consists of: Economy, Population and Transport, Work, Health and Poverty, Education, Crime and Leisure, Class and Religion and Government.  The five volumes have been brought together in Society under Pressure: Britain 1830-1914, a cheaper alternative to purchasing all five.  These books were extended into Coping with Change: British Society, 1780-1914 published in 2013.  A supplementary volume, Sex, Work and Politics: Women in Britain 1830-1918 was published in 2012, as a second and extended edition–Sex, Work and Politics: Women in Britain 1780-1945–in 2014 and a third edition, The Woman Question: Sex, Work and Politics 1780-1945, in 2020.  I completed a six-volume study on Chartism and in 2019 a revision of the first two volumes as Radicalism and Chartism 1790-1860.

I trained as a medievalist and have maintained my interest in medieval history with new translations of the twelfth-century Life of Louis the Fat and of eleventh century lives of Robert Guiscard and Roger I of Sicily.

In 2017 and 2018, I published People and Places: Britain 1780-1950, a collection of essays on economic change, Edward Thompson, the Romantics and George Orwell and extensive studies of nineteenth century Dunstable and two volumes of British social history 1780-1945, Society under Pressure and Reforming Society. In 2022 and 2023 these two volumes were extensively revised and extended into five volumes on British Society 1780-1945: Economy, Population and Transport 1780-1945, Classes and Cultures 1780-1945, Work, Health and Poverty 1780-1945, Education and Crime 1780-1945 and Religion and Government 1780-1945.