Peter Crookston published his most recent book Voices from the Hill in 2018. (Amazon.co.uk). It tells the story of a unique experiment by a 19th century Scottish laird to improve the conditions of his farming tenants in Wester Ross at a time when other landlords were evicting hundreds of families in the notorious Highland Clearances. The book, said Scotland’s leading historian, Prof. Sir Tom Devine,  'skilfully blends the past with the present. The Highlands would benefit from more reportage of this quality.’ The Foreword is by Scottish author and critic Neal Ascherson, who wrote: ‘Peter Crookston’s Voices from the Hill is a penetrating, moving and very personal study of a crofting community in the north-west Highlands.’

In 2010 Crookston’s book The Pitmen’s Requiem was published, which combined a social history of the Great Northern Coalfield with a biography of the miner/musician Robert Saint, composer of the miners’ hymn Gresford. In her Foreword, Margaret Drabble described it as ‘a moving account of the pit closures and an exploration of the landscape and a way of life that is vanishing day by day, and he has caught it just in time.’

Robert Colls, Professor of Cultural History at De Montfort University, Leicester – commissioned by The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography to write its entry on Robert Saint – has described Crookston’s The Pitmen’s Requiem as ‘a beautiful book.’

His first book, Villain (1967) described the life of a London safe-blower Crookston met while editing an issue about crime for The Sunday Times Magazine. An Observer review said it was ‘an unusually interesting documentary that tells us a great deal about the modern underworld.’

Peter Crookston edited four successful books from the series he produced at The Observer Magazine – Village London, Village England, Island Britain and The Ages of Britain. Island Britain was a Book Society choice and was listed as a 1982 non-fiction bestseller.