Novels Holland's first books were
Gothic horror novels about vampires, set in various time periods. His first novel,
The Vampyre: Being the True Pilgrimage of George Gordon, Sixth Lord Byron (1995), drew on his knowledge of Lord Byron from his university studies and recast the 19th-century poet as a vampire. It was re-titled
Lord of the Dead: The Secret History of Byron for the 1996 U.S. release. The
Los Angeles Times called it "a good vampire yarn—elevated and elegant enough to make you feel you needn't conceal it behind the dust jacket of some self-help work, yet happily gory and perilous" although they felt "the newly plowed plot ground is sometimes hurried through as if to get to the scholarly stuff, where the author feels perhaps on more solid ground." Its sequel,
Supping with Panthers, was published in 1996 (it was also re-titled for the U.S. release, to
Slave of My Thirst). Holland stayed with the supernatural horror genre for his next few books, continuing to use his knowledge of ancient cultures and settings. In
Attis (1996) he took historical figures from the ancient
Roman Republic like
Pompey and the poet
Catullus and put them in a modern setting among a string of brutal murders. He set 1997's
Deliver Us From Evil in 17th-century England, with a man named Faustus leading an army of the undead. 1999's
Sleeper in the Sands is set in Egypt, starting with the discovery of the
Tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922 and travelling backward in time as a deadly secret is unveiled.
Robert Macfarlane praised the book, writing that "This is high adventure with gothic edges and a black undertow, ballasted with serious historical research. Imagine
Tintin and the
Pharaohs,
Dracula and
Sherlock Holmes stirred together and shaken up" Holland's last novel to-date departed from the supernatural genre.
The Bone Hunter (1999) is a thriller, set in the United States, about the rivalry between two 19th-century
palaeontologists around whom people begin dying.
Historical non-fiction books Holland's interest in history was renewed after reading
From Alexander to Actium by the historian
Peter Green, as research for
The Bone Hunter. Despite having no formal qualifications in either
classics or
history, he gave up writing fiction and turned to writing history. "informative, balanced and accessible" by
BookPage, and "a model of exactly how a popular history of the classical world should be written" by
The Guardian.
Rubicon won the 2004
Hessell-Tiltman Prize, awarded to the best work of non-fiction of historical content. But the book also received reviews of a more negative tone, for example from Professor Ronald J. Weber of the University of Texas:
Persian Fire (2005) is an account of the 5th-century B.C.
Graeco-Persian Wars. It was reviewed positively by
Paul Cartledge, a professor of Greek history at Cambridge, for
The Independent: "If
Persian Fire does not win the
Samuel Johnson Prize, there is no justice in this world." Writing in
The Sunday Telegraph, the historian
Dominic Sandbrook called it "riveting" and praised the "enormous strengths" of the author. It won the
Anglo-Hellenic League's 2006
Runciman Award.
Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom (2008) examines the two centuries either side of the seminal year 1000 A.D., and how Western Europe ascended out of the
Early Middle Ages, to become a leading world civilisation once again. Reviewers praised the book's lively, colourful narrative style, but often criticised Holland's overall argument.
Chris Wickham wrote that
Diarmaid MacCulloch and
John Gillingham similarly criticised Holland's emphasis on the Millennium and the 11th century as the birth of modernity or as a major turning point in medieval history. Holland's book on the rise of Islam,
In the Shadow of the Sword (2012), was called "a work of impressive sensitivity and scholarship" by
The Daily Telegraph and "a book of extraordinary richness ... For Tom Holland has an enviable gift for summoning up the colour, the individuals and animation of the past, without sacrificing factual integrity" by
The Independent. But it was criticised by the historian
Glen Bowersock in
The Guardian as being written in "a swashbuckling style that aims more to unsettle his readers than to instruct them ... irresponsible and unreliable".
Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar (2015) covers the reigns of the five emperors of Rome's
Julio-Claudian dynasty, from
Augustus to
Nero. Professor of Classics at the University of Pennsylvania
Emily Wilson, reviewing it for
The Guardian, was critical of the "overblown style" and narrative's lurid details, saying, "this is ancient Rome for the age of
Donald Trump". But in his review for
The Observer,
Nick Cohen wrote "Among the many virtues of Tom Holland's terrific history is that he does not shrink from seeing the Roman emperors for what they were: 'the west's primal examples of tyranny'." Holland next wrote two short historical biographies. The first,
Athelstan: The Making of England (2016), is part of the '
Penguin Monarchs' series and covers the life of
Æthelstan, the 10th-century ruler regarded as the first king of England. The second, ''Æthelflæd: England's Forgotten Founder
(2019) is an entry in the Ladybird Expert'' series, and tells of Athelstan's aunt (and daughter of
Alfred the Great),
Æthelflæd, who ruled the
Anglo-Saxon kingdom of
Mercia in the early 10th century.
Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (titled
Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World for the US), was published in 2019. It is an examination of Christianity's influence on Western civilisation in which Holland maintains that the religion's influence continues to be seen in ethics and cultural norms throughout the world today, even when the religion itself is rejected: "To live in a western [
sic] country is to live in a society still utterly saturated by Christian concepts and assumptions."
Dominion received positive reviews, with
Kirkus Reviews calling it "astute and thoughtful", and
Publishers Weekly saying that "entertaining is too light a term and instructive is too heavy a term for a rich work that is enjoyably both". Reviewing it for
The Times, Gerard DeGroot, Emeritus Professor of History at the
University of St Andrews, argued that much of what Holland attributes to Christian influence is simply humanity evolving the need to work together for survival, but said "I have to commend the originality of this book, not to mention [Holland's] brave ambition." The scholars James Orr,
Gillian Evans and
Samuel Moyn all regarded the book’s earlier sections on ancient history as stronger than its later sections on more modern history. Evans writes that "The third section on "Modernitas" is perhaps the least successful, because of the degree of compression which it attempts".
Other writing Holland's translation of the
Histories by
Herodotus, the ancient Greek
historiographer, was published in 2013. Although Holland had studied Latin at school, his Greek is largely self-taught, and he set himself the task of translating one paragraph of the over-800-page
Histories every day until he finished. The classics scholar
Edith Hall reviewed it for
The Times Literary Supplement and said it was "unquestionably the best English translation of Herodotus to have appeared in the past half-century, and there have been quite a few ... I am in awe of Tom Holland's achievement." Upon hearing that his 2025 translation of
The Lives of the Caesars was the first hardback
Penguin classics edition to enter the
Sunday Times nonfiction bestsellers list, Holland said that he was "delighted for
Suetonius, to see the lad is capable of getting on the bestseller list after two millennia". Holland has written dozens of articles for newspapers, journals and websites on varied topics including wildlife conservation, sport, politics and history. He also writes occasional book reviews for
The Guardian. Holland has also written for the stage. His first play,
The Importance of Being Frank, told the story of
Oscar Wilde's imprisonment and trial. His second was
Death of a Maid, which focused on the life of Joan of Arc. In March 2019, he announced on Twitter that he had written an opera about
Cleopatra and it was in the showcase stage of development. Holland was one of the inaugural contributors to the popular Classics website Antigone. == Radio ==