Somerset de Chair was educated at The King's School, Parramatta, in New South Wales between 1923 and 1930 before attending Balliol College, Oxford.

Since he had been a cadet in the Officers' Training Corps at Oxford, De Chair qualified for a commission as a Reserve Second Lieutenant of the Life Guards in 1938.

[2] De Chair wrote historical non-fiction, a number of now largely neglected novels, one play, three collections of poetry, and several works of autobiography.

He lived between 1944 and 1949 at Chilham Castle in Kent, and leased Blickling Hall in Norfolk, the former home of the Marquess of Lothian, from the National Trust.

[4][5] He owned St Osyth's Priory in Essex from 1954 until his death in 1995, and also bought Bourne Park House in Kent with his last wife, Lady Juliet Wentworth-Fitzwilliam.