He was educated at Queen's University Belfast, taking a BA in 1970 and his doctorate in 1976 on Townshend's viceroyalty in 1767-72. He was the first Naughton Fellow in Irish Studies in 1999. He also holds the Chair of Irish History at the University of Aberdeen. He was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 1995 and has held several visiting professorships in the USA and Britain.

• Penal Era and Golden Age: Essays in Irish History, 1690-1800 (Belfast, 1979)
• (as co-editor) Irish Studies: A General Introduction (Dublin, 1988).
• The Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation: the Catholic Question, 1690-1830. (Gill and Macmillan, 1992)
• (ed), A Military History of Ireland, (Cambridge, 1996).
• Theobald Wolfe Tone (Dundalk, 1998), pp. 89
• (co-author) The Irish Rebellion of 1798: a Bicentennary perspective (Dublin, 2003)
• (editor) Revolutionary Dublin: the letters of Francis Higgins to Dublin Castle, 1795-1801 (Dublin, 2003)
• Ireland : A History (Cambridge University Press 2010)

• Bartlett has also written numerous papers for learned journals.