Ben Elton Books in Order

What Have I Done? is Elton’s candid autobiography, tracing his journey from shy drama student and Comedy Store compère to co-writing The Young Ones and Blackadder, creating hit novels and musicals, and juggling family life with decades in the spotlight.

Upstart Crow expands the TV sitcom into prose, following a harried young William Shakespeare between cramped London lodgings and Stratford home life as he steals ideas from friends, rivals and family to crack the plots of plays like Romeo and Juliet.

Identity Crisis is a satirical crime novel in which old-school detective Mick Matlock investigates a string of bizarre murders while floundering through social media storms, culture-war arguments and a maze of online identities, outrage campaigns and weaponised hashtags.

Time and Time Again sees ex-soldier Hugh Stanton sent from 2024 back to 1914 with one mission: stop the events that trigger the First World War, only to find that changing history comes with tangled politics, paradoxes and moral compromises.

Two Brothers follows Paulus and Otto, boys raised as twins in a Jewish family in Berlin even though only one is biologically Jewish, tracing their intertwined fates as Nazism rises and love, loyalty and identity are tested to breaking point.

Meltdown tracks Jimmy Corby, a high-rolling London trader with a glossy social circle, from cocaine-fueled boom years to the fallout of the financial crash, as he and his friends discover what survives when the money and status vanish.

Blind Faith is set in a flooded future London where privacy is sinful, every moment is streamed and unquestioning religious zeal replaces science, following one quiet sceptic whose doubts put him and his family in danger.

Chart Throb skewers talent-show culture by following producer Calvin Simms as he rigs a season of the hit singing contest he created, juggling a bitter ex-wife, shameless judges and thousands of hopeful contestants whose dreams are just part of the script.

The First Casualty sends disgraced conscientious objector and former detective Douglas Kingsley to the trenches of Flanders in 1917 to solve the suspicious death of a celebrated war poet, confronting him with mud, propaganda and the blurred line between murder and war.

Past Mortem pairs a serial-killer investigation with a school reunion, as Detective Edward Newson hunts someone using an old classmates’ website to track childhood bullies and kill them, while he privately revisits his own teenage humiliations and first love.

High Society weaves together a reforming MP, a drug-addled pop star, a trafficked teenager and a police chief to ask whether the war on drugs creates more misery than it cures, mixing grim stories with dark, angry jokes.

Dead Famous is a murder mystery set inside House Arrest, a voyeuristic reality show where one contestant is killed on camera and a weary detective must sift through weeks of footage while the ratings climb and the nation bets on whodunnit.

Inconceivable follows Sam and Lucy Bell, a London couple keeping parallel diaries as they navigate infertility, IVF, career pressures and temptation, blending romantic comedy with a frank look at how wanting a baby can strain even a solid marriage.

Silly Cow is a viciously comic play about Doris Wallace, a tabloid columnist whose drink, drugs, affairs and libellous scoops catch up with her, as rivals, lawsuits and backstage betrayals threaten to blow up her dream TV career.

Blast from the Past traps Polly Slade in her flat with two men from her history—a powerful American general and the stalker who’s been tormenting her—unfolding a tense, single-night thriller about obsession, consent, politics and unfinished business.

Ben Elton Plays 1 brings together three of his sharpest stage comedies—Gasping, Silly Cow and Popcorn—showcasing his mix of rapid-fire one-liners and moral outrage in stories about bottled air, tabloid viciousness and media-fuelled violence.

Popcorn throws controversial Hollywood director Bruce Delamitri into a night-long hostage standoff with killer fans Wayne and Scout, turning his mansion into a live-broadcast trial about violence, responsibility and whether entertainment can ever claim to be only a movie.

This Other Eden takes place in a world so damaged that consumers retreat into sealed 'claustrosphere' domes, following an ad man and an actor as they sell environmental ruin back to the public while eco-terrorists fight in the background.

Gridlock imagines a near-future London where traffic congestion is weaponised, shadowy interests orchestrate chaos to push a road-building bonanza, and a radical transport plan from a disabled inventor threatens the profits of politicians, oil giants and car makers.

Gasping is a stage comedy about Lockheart Industries, a ruthless corporation that turns designer air into the next luxury product, as executives market the 'Suck and Blow' machine and discover what happens when even oxygen is up for sale.

Stark follows CD, a hapless Englishman in Australia, who stumbles on a cabal of billionaires planning to abandon a dying Earth for the Moon, mixing environmental apocalypse with slapstick satire and a scruffy band of eco-activists.

Bachelor Boys is a chaotic tie-in to The Young Ones, written in the voices of Rik, Vyvyan, Mike and Neil, full of fake articles, lists, photos and gags that extend the anarchic student flatshare onto the page.