David Churchill Somervell (16 July 1885– 17 January 1965) was an English historian and teacher. He taught at three well-known English public schools –

Repton Repton is a village and civil parish in the South Derbyshire district of Derbyshire, England, located on the edge of the River Trent floodplain, about north of Swadlincote. The population taken at the 2001 Census was 2,707, increasing to 2,8 ...

Tonbridge Tonbridge ( ) is a market town in Kent, England, on the River Medway, north of Royal Tunbridge Wells, south west of Maidstone and south east of London. In the administrative borough of Tonbridge and Malling, it had an estimated populat ...

and

Benenden Benenden is a village and civil parish in the borough of Tunbridge Wells in Kent, England. The parish is located on the Weald, to the west of Tenterden. In addition to the main village, Iden Green, East End, Dingleden and Standen Street settle ...

– and was the author of several volumes of history and the editor of well-regarded abridgements of other historians' works.

Life and career

Somervell was the son of Robert Somervell, a history master and

bursar A bursar (derived from " bursa", Latin for '' purse'') is a professional administrator in a school or university often with a predominantly financial role. In the United States, bursars usually hold office only at the level of higher education ( ...

at Harrow School."Mr D. C. Somervell: A Great Teacher of History", ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'', 20 January 1965, p. 12 He was educated at Harrow and Magdalen College, Oxford. Becoming a schoolmaster himself, he taught at

from 1909 to 1919, with a break during the First World War, during which he served in the

Ministry of Munitions The Minister of Munitions was a British government position created during the First World War to oversee and co-ordinate the production and distribution of munitions for the war effort. The position was created in response to the Shell Crisis o ...

. In 1919 he was appointed history master at

Tonbridge School (God Giveth the Increase) , established = , closed = , type = Public schoolIndependent day and boarding , religion = , president = , head_label ...

, where he remained until his retirement in 1950."Somervell, David Churchill"
''Who Was Who'', Oxford University Press, 2014, retrieved 5 August 2015 In 1918, he married Dorothea, daughter of the Rev D Harford. They had one son and one daughter. After retiring from Tonbridge he taught at the girls' school

, which was close to his retirement home. In his '' Who's Who'' entry Somervell listed eleven of his books: ''A Short History of our Religion'' (1922); ''Disraeli and Gladstone'' (1925); ''English Thought in the Nineteenth Century'' (1928); ''The British Empire'' (1930); ''The Reign of King George the Fifth'' (1935); ''Robert Somervell of Harrow'' (1935); ''Livingstone'' (1936); ''A History of the United States'' (1942); ''A History of Tonbridge School'' (1947); ''British Politics since 1900'' (1950); ''and Stanley Baldwin'' (1953). ''The Reign of King George V,'' (2nd ed, 1936) 550pp; has wide-ranging political, social and economic coverage, 1910–35. It is online free. In addition to his own original writings, Somervell gained a reputation for his skill at abridging lengthy histories and other works into single volumes. His obituarist in ''

'' singled out a condensation and conflation of "two massive Victorian biographies of Disraeli and Gladstone into one short volume which did not deter the reader", and regarded as his best-known work his compression of Arnold J. Toynbee's ten-volume ''

A Study of History ''A Study of History'' is a 12-volume universal history by the British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, published from 1934 to 1961. It received enormous popular attention but according to historian Richard J. Evans, "enjoyed only a brief vogue befo ...

''. His adbridgement of the Toynbee work was reissued in two volumes by the

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

in 1988."New paperbacks", ''The Times'', 26 March 1988, p. 21

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Somervell, David 1885 births 1965 deaths People educated at Harrow School 20th-century British historians