He is a Member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo, and an honorary fellow of both Peterhouse, Cambridge (since 2010), and Trinity College, Cambridge (since 2011).[5]
De Dominis, 1560–1624: Venetian, Anglican, Ecumenist, and Relapsed Heretic (1984)
George Enescu: His Life and Music ( Toccata Press, 1990), which has been translated into several languages
Bosnia: A Short History (New York University Press, 1994), which has been translated into several languages
Origins of English Nonsense (HarperCollins, 1997)
Kosovo: A Short History (New York University Press, 1998)
Books on Bosnia: A Critical Bibliography of Works relating to Bosnia-Herzegovina Published Since 1990 in West European Languages (with Quintin Hoare) (Bosnian Institute, 1999)
Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford University Press, 2002)
John Pell (1611–1685) and His Correspondence with Sir Charles Cavendish: The Mental World of an Early Modern Mathematician (with Jacqueline Stedall) (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits and Spies in the Late Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean World (2015)
Useful Enemies: Islam and The Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750 (2019)
Rebels, Believers, Survivors: Studies in the History of the Albanians (Oxford University Press, 2020)[12]
Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe. Male-Male Sexual Relations, 1400-1750 (Oxford University Press, 2024).[13]
Malcolm edited Reason of State, Propaganda, and the Thirty Years War: An Unknown Translation by Thomas Hobbes (Clarendon Press, 2007), The Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes (1994) and Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (three volumes, Oxford University Press, 2012), for which he was awarded a British Academy Medal.[3] He has also contributed more than 40 journal articles or chapters in books since 2002.[5]
Malcolm's book Kosovo: A Short History (1998) was the subject of an extended debate in Foreign Affairs. The debate began with a review of the book by Aleksa Djilas, a former Fellow of the Russian Research Center at Harvard University, who wrote that the book was "marred by his sympathies for its ethnic Albanian separatists, anti-Serbian bias, and illusions about the Balkans".[24] Malcolm responded that Djilas had not produced any evidence to counter the evidence in the book, and had instead resorted to belittling both Malcolm and his work, including the use of personal slurs and patronising language.[21] The debate continued with Serbian-born Professor Stevan K. Pavlowitch of the University of Southampton asserting that Malcolm's book lacked precision, Melanie McDonagh of the Bosnian Institute claiming that Djilas's review took a "nationalistic approach", and Norman Cigar of Marine Corps University stating that Djilas was trying to create myths to legitimise Serbian actions in Kosovo.[25][26]
Other reviews of Kosovo: A Short History were varied. For example, in English Historical Review, Zbyněk Zeman observed that Malcolm "tries not to take sides",[27] but in American Historical Review, Nicholas J. Miller stated that the book was "conceptually flawed" by Malcolm's insistence on treating Kosovo as "a place on its own; [rather than as] a scrap of irredenta that Serbs and Albanians fight over".[28]
Later the same year Thomas Emmert of the history faculty of Gustavus Adolphus College, Minnesota, reviewed the book in the Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans Online and, while praising aspects of the book, also asserted that it was "shaped by the author's overriding determination to challenge Serbian myths". He claimed that Malcolm was "partisan" and complained that the book made a "transparent attempt to prove that the main Serbian myths are false".[29] Malcolm responded in the same journal in early 2000, asserting that the book challenged both Albanian and Serbian myths about Kosovo, but that there were more Serbian myths about Kosovo than Albanian ones and this explained the greater coverage of Serbian myths in the book. He also observed that Emmert's perspective and work were largely within the framework of Serbian historiography, and that that was the reason for Emmert's assertion that Malcolm was "partisan".[30] Emmert also criticized Malcolm's opposition to the Serbian claim to Kosovo as the “cradle of civilization”, stating that Kosovo did become the center of medieval Serbia and that such feelings among modern Serbs should not be disputed.[29] He also noted the absence of Serbian archives.[29] Likewise, Tim Judah and Misha Glenny criticized Malcolm for not using Serbian sources in the book.[22][31] He responded that there were no proper Serbian archives for that period of history, but also noted that he had studied a large number of works by Serbian and Montenegrin authors.[22]
In 2006 a study by Frederick Anscombe looked at issues surrounding scholarship on Kosovo such as Noel Malcolm's book.[32] Anscombe noted that Malcolm offered "a detailed critique of the competing versions of Kosovo's history" and that his work marked a "remarkable reversal" of previous acceptance by western historians of the "Serbian account" regarding the migration of the Serbs (1690) from Kosovo.[32]
Malcolm has been criticized for being "anti-Serbian" and selective with sources, while other critics have concluded that "his arguments are unconvincing".[33] The majority of the documents that Malcolm used were written by adversaries of the Ottoman state or by officials with limited experience of the region.[33] Anscombe notes that Malcolm, like Serbian and Yugoslav historians who have ignored his conclusions, have not considered indigenous evidence such as that from the Ottoman archive when composing national history.[33]
In a 2007 work the Serbian historian Dušan T. Bataković claimed that Malcolm's book about Kosovo was "notoriously pro-Albanian".[34] Frederick Anscombe has accused Bataković of writing several works in the 1980s and 1990s which advanced a Serbian nationalist perspective regarding Kosovo.[35]
^ abAnscombe 2006, p. 770. "Noel Malcolm, who offers a detailed critique of the competing versions of Kosovo's history ... Here is a remarkable reversal, as Malcolm, like other Western historians, had previously accepted the Serbian account."
^ abcAnscombe 2006, pp. 770–771. "Malcolm is criticized for being anti-Serbian, and for using his sources as selectively as the Serbs, though the more restrained of his critics only suggest that his arguments are unconvincing. Most of the documents he relies on were written by enemies of the Ottoman Empire, or by officials with limited experience of the Ottoman Balkans. ... Malcolm, like the historians of Serbia and Yugoslavia who ignore his findings, overlooks the most valuable indigenous evidence. Unwillingness to consider Ottoman evidence when constructing national history is exemplified by the Serbian historians..."
^Bataković 2007, p. 13: "Notoriously pro-Albanian as regards the Kosovo issue is Noel Malcolm, Kosovo. A Short History (London: Mac- millan, 1998)."
Djilas, Aleksa (1998). "Imagining Kosovo: A Biased New Account Fans Western Confusion". Foreign Affairs. 77 (5 September/October 1998): 124–131. doi:10.2307/20049055. JSTOR20049055.
Emmert, Thomas (1999). "Challenging myth in a short history of Kosovo". Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans Online. 1 (2): 217–221. doi:10.1080/14613199908414002.
Miller, Nicholas J. (1998). "Noel Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History, New York:New York University Press. 1998". American Historical Review. 103 (5 December 1998): 1648–1649. doi:10.1086/ahr/103.5.1648.
Zeman, Zbyněk (1999). "Kosovo. A Short History by Noel Malcolm". The English Historical Review. 114 (457 June 1999): 801–802. doi:10.1093/ehr/114.457.801. JSTOR580536.
Newspapers and magazines
Malcolm, Noel (12 November 1995), "David Owen and His Balkan Bungling", The Sunday Telegraph
Malcolm, Noel (6 November 1996), "The Grandee and a Question of Genocide", Daily Mail
Malcolm, Noel (30 March 1998a), "The Past Must Not be Prologue", Time