Tim Pat Coogan's Book that Christmas & Co are hailing as being the new bible did not stand up all that well to critical review:

"I can't think of a single historian who has researched the Famine in depth – and Tim Pat has not researched it in depth. One of the striking things about this book is the narrowness of the evidential sources he uses and indeed they're presented so badly. Titles are misquoted. You might even say the title of his own book, The Plot, is itself misleading, and indeed the subtitle, England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy. Well it was Britain, not the United Kingdom. That's an old nationalist trope: England the neverending source of Ireland's ills. I find it terribly difficult, and I'm not being unkind, to find any redeeming feature in this book. That's its only point of originality. It's outdated, outmoded, and could I say, I was pleased to see that at moments you did engage with some modern scholarship, like Joel Mokyr, the great Dutch historian … of the Great Famine. I don't think you understood what he was saying. You have a phrase at one point – excess mortality – numbers per cent per thousand – that phrase means nothing. You clearly didn't understand what he was saying. And when you talk about coffin ships, one of the searing images of the Famine – appalling – and of course I accept that the Great Famine was a vast catastrophe, that's the title of one of my publications on this, but even when talking about coffin ships, surely you need to set that in context. The Grosse Isle experience was appalling, I've been to Grosse Isle, I've seen those graves, but that was not typical of transatlantic shipping during the Famine. If you had read Joel Mokyr and others, as your references seem to suggest, you would see quite clearly that Mokyr says that that first year of shipping particularly to the mouth of Saint Lawrence was untypical and that mortality on ships across the Atlantic was less than 5 per cent. Less actually than German emigrants migrating to North America in the same time period. So either you're guilty of incredibly selective reading or, I just wonder, have you lost the plot? Did you really understand what you were reading at times? - Professor Liam Kennedy

Tim Pat does admit that he targets what he calls "academic historians", I suppose he means those that have studied history and who have had to prove their ability to do so. He certainly has not.

So Tim Pat has written 6 books has he? Well if that is your metric Max Hastings has written 26 - only one subject you say? Work it out for yourself:

America, 1968: The Fire This Time (Gollancz, 1969) ISBN 0-575-00234-4
Ulster 1969

The Fight for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland (Gollancz, 1970) ISBN 0-575-00482-7

Montrose: The King's Champion (Gollancz, 1977) ISBN 0-575-02226-4

Bomber Command (Michael Joseph, 1979) ISBN 0-7181-1603-8

Battle of Britain by Len Deighton, Max Hastings (Jonathan Cape, 1980) ISBN 0-224-01826-4

Yoni — Hero of Entebbe: Life of Yonathan Netanyahu (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980) ISBN 0-297-77565-0

Das Reich: Resistance and the March of the Second SS Panzer Division Through France, June 1944 (Michael Joseph, 1981) ISBN 0-7181-2074-4

Das Reich: March of the Second SS Panzer Division Through France (Henry Holt & Co, 1982) ISBN 0-03-057059-X

The Battle for the Falklands by Max Hastings, Simon Jenkins (W W Norton, 1983) ISBN 0-393-01761-3, (Michael Joseph, 1983) ISBN 0-7181-2228-3

Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy (Simon & Schuster, 1984) ISBN 0-671-46029-3

The Oxford Book of Military Anecdotes (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 1985) ISBN 0-19-214107-4

Victory in Europe (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985) ISBN 0-297-78650-4

The Korean War (Michael Joseph, 1987) ISBN 0-7181-2068-X, (Simon & Schuster, 1987) ISBN 0-671-52823-8

Outside Days (Michael Joseph, 1989) ISBN 0-7181-3330-7

Victory in Europe: D-Day to V-E Day (Little Brown & C, 1992) ISBN 0-316-81334-6

Scattered Shots (Macmillan, 1999) ISBN 0-333-77103-6

Going to the Wars (Macmillan, 2000) ISBN 0-333-77104-4

Editor: A Memoir (Macmillan, 2002) ISBN 0-333-90837-6

Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45 (Macmillan, 2004) ISBN 0-333-90836-8

Warriors: Exceptional Tales from the Battlefield (HarperPress [UK], 2005) ISBN 978-0-00-719756-9

Country Fair (HarperCollins, October 2005) ISBN 0-00-719886-8.

Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45 (HarperPress [UK], October 2007) ISBN 0-00-721982-2 (re-titled Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45 for US release Knopf ISBN 978-0-307-26351-3)

Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord, 1940–45. London, HarperPress, 2009. ISBN 978-0-00-726367-7 (re-titled Winston's War: Churchill, 1940–1945 for US release by Knopf, 2010, ISBN 978-0-307-26839-6)

Did You Really Shoot the Television?: A Family Fable. London, HarperPress, 2010. ISBN 978-0-00-727171-9

All Hell Let Loose: The World At War, 1939–1945. London, HarperPress, 29 September 2011. ISBN 978-0-00-733809-2 (re-titled Inferno: The World At War, 1939–1945 for US release by Knopf, 1 November 2011, ISBN 978-0-307-27359-8. 729 pp)

Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War. London, Knopf Press, Release Date 24 September 2013, ISBN 978-0307597052, 640 pp.