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