His first book was The Survival of the Habsburg Empire, Radetzky, the Imperial Army and the Class War, 1848 (London and New York, 1979); his second was The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire, 1815-1918 (London and New York, 1989).
More recently, he has published Metternich and Austria. An Evaluation (2008), Radetzky, Imperial Victor and Military Genius (2011) and Abraham Lincoln: the Critical History of an American Icon (2013). He has written several articles on Habsburg history including:
• Metternich and the Federalist Myth;
• The Metternich System,1815-1848;
• Metternich's Enemies or The Threat from Below;
• Historians, the Nationality Question and the Downfall of the Habsburg Empire;
• Die habsburger Monarchie und die Herausforderung des Nationalismus;
• Nationalism in the Fin-de Siecle Habsburg Monarchy;
• Explaining the Habsburg Monarchy, 1830-1890;
• Jelacic in the Summer of 1848;
• Mirror Images: Kossuth and Jelacic in 1848-49;
• Metternich and the Ficquelmont Mission of 1847-48.
• The Decision Against Reform in Lombardy-Venetia;
• J.A. Blackwell's Vain Attempts to Become British Consul in Hungary;
• Benedek, Breinl and the ‘Galician Horrors’ of 1846;
• Austria and the Galician Massacres of 1846. Schwarzenberg and the Propaganda War. An Unknown but Key Episode in the Career of the Austrian Statesman;
• Franz Joseph and the Creation of the Ringstrasse;
• Social Life and Legal Constraints. The Habsburg Army, 1890-1914;
• The European State System in the Modern World.
He has also published three books on British history:
• Post-War Britain: A Political History, 1945-1992 (London, 1993);
• Britain's Decline: Problems and Perspectives (Oxford, 1986);
• An Intelligent Person's Guide to Post-War Britain (London, 1997).
He is presently writing the Penguin History of Post-War (Western) Europe, which will also cover post-war Britain.
These themes apart, he has written articles on general history and has edited two books:
Crisis and Controversy, Essays in Honour of A.J.P.Taylor (London, 1976) and
Europe's Balance of Power, 1815-1848 (London, 1979).