| Novels | |
| Ezra Pound and His World | 1980 |
| The Great Fire of London | 1982 |
| The Last Will and Testament of Oscar Wilde | 1983 |
| The House of Doctor Dee | 1983 |
| Hawksmoor | 1985 |
| Milton in America | 1986 |
| Chatterton | 1987 |
| First Light | 1989 |
| English Music | 1992 |
| Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem aka The Trial of Elizabeth Cree | 1994 |
| The Plato Papers | 1999 |
| The Clerkenwell Tales | 2003 |
| The Lambs of London | 2004 |
| The Fall of Troy | 2006 |
| The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein | 2008 |
| Collections | |
| London Lickpenny | 1973 |
| Country Life | 1978 |
| The Diversions of Purley | 1987 |
| The Collection: Journalism, Reviews, Essays, Short Stories, Lectures | 2001 |
| Non-Fiction Series | |
| Voyages Through Time | |
| Escape From Earth | 2003 |
| In The Beginning | 2003 |
| Cities of Blood | 2004 |
| Kingdom of the Dead | 2004 |
| Non-Fiction | |
| Notes for a New Culture: An Essay on Modernism | 1976 |
| Dressing Up: Transvestism and Drag | 1979 |
| T. S. Eliot | 1984 |
| Dickens' London: An Imaginative Vision | 1987 |
| Dickens | 1990 |
| Blake: A Biography | 1995 |
| The Life of Thomas More | 1998 |
| London: The Biography | 2000 |
| Turner | 2002 |
| Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination | 2002 |
| The English Imagination | 2002 |
| The Mystery of Charles Dickens | 2002 |
| Illustrated London | 2003 |
| Brief Lives - Chaucer | 2004 |
| Shakespeare: A Biography | 2004 |
| The Thames | 2007 |
| Poe: A Life Cut Short | 2008 |
| Newton: Ackroyd's Brief Lives | 2008 |