Professor Lonsdale published many journal articles, books and book chapters including[1][5]
- A political history of Nyanza, 1883–1945, PhD thesis University of Cambridge 1964[6]
- Some Origins of Nationalism in East Africa, The Journal of African History 9 (1968), 119 – 146, Cambridge University Press[7]
- Coping with the Contradictions: the Development of the Colonial State in Kenya, 1895-1914 by Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, The Journal of African History 20 (1979), 487–505
- The growth and transformation of the colonial state in Kenya, 1929–52, University of Nairobi, Dept. of History, [1980], Series: Staff seminar paper (University of Nairobi. Department of History), 79/80, n. 17
- Explanation of the Mau Mau revolt, Johannesburg : University of the Witwatersrand, 1983
- Kikuyu political thought and the ideologies of Mau Mau, Los Angeles (California), African Studies Association, 1986
- Mau Mau through the Looking Glass, Index on Censorship 15(1986), 19–22[8]
- South Africa in question, John Lonsdale (Ed.), Cambridge: African Studies Centre, University of Cambridge; London: Currey; Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1988
- Unhappy Valley : Conflict in Kenya and Africa. Book One: State and class. Book Two: Violence & Ethnicity by Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, Eastern African Studies. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. London: James Currey, Nairobi: Heinemann, 1992
- Politics in Kenya by John Lonsdale and Wanyiri Kihoro, Edinburgh University, Centre of African Studies, 1992
- 'Listen while I read' : orality, literacy and Christianity in the young Kenyatta's making of the Kikuyu, Edinburgh, 1995
- Mau Mau and Nationhood : arms, authority & narration by E.S. Atieno Odhiambo and John Lonsdale, Oxford : Currey; Nairobi : EAEP; Athens : Ohio University Press, 2003
- Writing for Kenya. the life and works of Henry Muoria by Wangari Muoria-Sal, Bodil Folke Frederiksen, John Lonsdale, Derek Peterson (Eds.). Series: African Sources for African History, Volume: 10, Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2009
- Chapter 1. On Writing Kenya's History, in A Tapestry of African Histories: With Longer Times and Wider Geopolitics by Nicholas K. Githuku (Ed.), Lexington Books, 2021[9]
