- Nature’s Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick (Faber: 2006)
- A Little History of British Gardening (Chatto & Windus, 2004)
- The Lunar Men: The Friends Who Made the Future (Faber, 2002)
- Hogarth: A Life and a World (Faber, 1997)
- Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories (Faber, 1993)
- George Eliot (Virago, 1987)