Tombs (born 8 May 1949) is a British historian of France, and is Professor Emeritus of French history at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of St John's College.
Prior to this, he was a Reader in the subject until 2007.Tombs' specialty is nineteenth-century France, particularly the Paris Commune.
His work focused on the political culture of the working classes, and led him to revise a number of myths associated with the history of the Commune; in this, he is similar to the French historian Jacques Rougerie.
His first book, The War Against Paris, 1871, analyzed the role of the French army in the suppression of the Paris Commune.In 2006, with his wife, Isabelle Tombs, he wrote That Sweet Enemy: The French and the British from the Sun King to the Present, a history of the relationship between Britain and France.