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, Tonbridge and Benenden – 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 at Harrow School.^[1] He was educated at Harrow and Magdalen College, Oxford.^[2] Becoming a schoolmaster himself, he taught at Repton from 1909 to 1919, with a break during the First World War, during which he served in the Ministry of Munitions.^[3] In 1919 he was appointed history master at Tonbridge School, where he remained until his retirement in 1950.^[2] In 1918, he married Dorothea, daughter of the Rev D Harford. They had one son and one daughter.^[2] After retiring from Tonbridge he taught at the girls' school Benenden, which was close to his retirement home.^[4]

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).^[2]

The Reign of King George V, (2nd ed, 1936) 550pp; has wide-ranging political, social and economic coverage, 1910–35. It is online free.^[5]

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 The Times 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.^[1] His adbridgement of the Toynbee work was reissued in two volumes by the Oxford University Press in 1988.^[6]