author
Robert Charles Tombs
1842–1923
Best known for lively histories of Bristol’s postal service, this British writer turned the story of mail, coaches, telegraphs, and telephones into readable local history. His books preserve how communication changed everyday life in one city over several centuries.
2 Audiobooks
The Bristol Royal Mail: Post, Telegraph, and Telephone
by Robert Charles Tombs
About the author
Born in 1842 and dying in 1923, he is remembered today through works such as The King's Post and The Bristol Royal Mail: Post, Telegraph, and Telephone. Both books focus on Bristol and trace the growth of postal and communication systems over long stretches of time.
His writing has a practical, documentary feel, gathering historical facts about posts, mail coaches, roads, railway mail services, telegraphs, and telephones. That makes his work especially useful for readers interested in local history, transport, and the everyday infrastructure that kept people connected.
Reliable biographical detail appears to be limited in the sources I could confirm, so it is safest to see him mainly as a British local historian of communications whose surviving reputation rests on these detailed studies of Bristol’s mail and messaging networks.