[11][12] In 2006, along with his wife, Tombs 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.

It became critical when discussing Franco-British relations, and helped establish Tombs and his work in political, diplomatic, and policy circles.

[23] Tombs is the editor of History Reclaimed,[24] a website created by a "group of anti-woke scholars" that opposes what they claim to be censorship of historical texts in universities[25] including Nigel Biggar, Zareer Masani, and Andrew Roberts.

[27] His wife Isabelle Tombs (née Bussy) was born in France, and is in charge of French training at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

[32] In November 2021, Tombs expressed strong support for the retention of the English Wikipedia article "Mass killings under communist regimes", then facing the prospect of deletion on neutrality and original research grounds.