{{Short description|British barrister, judge and Conservative Party politician}} {{Use dmy dates|date=August 2016}} {{Use British English|date=August 2016}} {{Infobox officeholder | honorific_prefix = The Right Honourable | name = The Lord Somervell of Harrow | honorific_suffix = {{Post-nominals|country=GBR|OBE|PC|size=100%}} | image = Sir Donald Somervell 1945.jpg | caption = Somervell in 1945 by Walter Stoneman | order1 = Home Secretary | term_start1 = 25 May 1945 | term_end1 = 26 July 1945 | prime_minister1 = Winston Churchill | predecessor1 = Herbert Morrison | successor1 = James Chuter Ede | order2 = Attorney General for England and Wales | term_start2 = 18 March 1936 | term_end2 = 25 May 1945 | prime_minister2 = {{Unbulleted list |Stanley Baldwin |Neville Chamberlain |Winston Churchill}} | predecessor2 = Sir Thomas Inskipp | successor2 = Sir David Maxwell Fyfe | order3 = Solicitor General for England and Wales | term_start3 = 29 September 1933 | term_end3 = 19 March 1936 | prime_minister3 = {{Unbulleted list |Ramsay MacDonald |Stanley Baldwin}} | predecessor3 = Sir Boyd Merriman | successor3 = Sir Terence O'Connor | birth_date = {{Birth date text|24 August 1889}} | birth_place = Harrow on the Hill, London, England | death_date = {{death date text|18 November 1960}} (aged 71) | death_place = Marylebone, London, England | party = Conservative | alma_mater = Magdalen College, Oxford | spouse = {{Marriage |Loelia Helen Buchan-Hepburn |1933|1945|end=d}} | office = Lord of Appeal in Ordinary | office1 = | term_start = 4 October 1954 | term_end = 6 January 1960 | predecessor = The Lord Asquith of Bishopstone | successor = The Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest }}
'''Donald Bradley Somervell, Baron Somervell of Harrow''', {{Post-nominals|country=GBR|OBE|PC|size=100%}} (24 August 1889 – 18 November 1960) was a British barrister, judge and Conservative Party politician. He served as Solicitor General and Attorney General from 1933 to 1945 and was briefly Home Secretary in Winston Churchill's 1945 caretaker government.
==Background, education and legal career== Somervell was the son of Robert Somervell, master and bursar of Harrow School. His father taught English to Winston Churchill.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Thatcher |first1=Margaret |title=Speech to Harrow School |url=https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105486 |website=Margaret Thatcher Foundation |access-date=10 June 2025}}</ref> He was educated at Harrow before reading chemistry with a demyship at Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating with a First in 1911. In 1912 he was elected a prize fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, the first chemist to be elected.<ref name=":0">{{Cite ODNB|author=Evershed|author2=Marc Brodie|title=Somervell, Donald Bradley, Baron Somervell of Harrow|id=36189}}</ref> He then joined the Inner Temple, but his legal training was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. Commissioned into the British Army, he served with the Middlesex Regiment and the 53rd Brigade in India and Mesopotamia. For his war service, he was appointed OBE in 1919.<ref name=":0" />
Having been called to the bar ''in absentia'' in 1916, he completed his pupillage and practiced in the chambers of William Jowitt, specialising in commercial law matters arising out of the Treaty of Versailles.<ref name=":0" /> He became King's Counsel in 1929.<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=33473 |date=1 March 1929 |page=1448}}</ref>
==Political career== In 1929 he entered politics. Although supporting the Liberal Party by inclination, its decline and his admiration for Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin led him to join the Conservative Party. He stood unsuccessfully for Crewe in the 1929 general election. He won the seat in the 1931 election and held it for 14 years.
In 1933, he became Solicitor General,<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=33983 |date=3 October 1933 |page=6351}}</ref> receiving the customary knighthood,<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=33984 |date=6 October 1933 |page=6418}}</ref> followed three years later by a promotion to Attorney General. In the latter post, he served for nine years during which he oversaw crises such as the Abdication Crisis of Edward VIII. He was the longest-serving Attorney General since 1754.{{citation needed|date=April 2016}} He was sworn of the Privy Council in the 1938 Birthday Honours.<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=34525 |date=24 June 1938 |page=4056}}</ref> He was Recorder of Kingston upon Thames from 1940 to 1946.<ref name=":0" />
In 1945, he was briefly Home Secretary in Winston Churchill's caretaker government. Both the government and Somervell were defeated in that year's general election.
==Judicial career== In 1946, Somervell was made a Lord Justice of Appeal by Clement Attlee. In 1951 Churchill returned to power but passed over Somervell's claims to the Lord Chancellorship.<ref name=":0" /> On 4 October 1954 Somervell became a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and, as a Law Lord, he received a life peerage as '''Baron Somervell of Harrow''', of Ewelme in the County of Oxford.<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=40294|date=5 October 1954|page=5649}}</ref> He retired in 1960, shortly before his death.
==Family== {{unreferenced section|date=April 2016}} Somervell married Loelia Helen Buchan-Hepburn, daughter of Sir Archibald Buchan-Hepburn, 4th Baronet, in 1933. She died in July 1945, aged 48. Somervell survived her by fifteen years and died in November 1960, aged 71. His grave can be found in the grounds of Saint Mary's Church in Ewelme, opposite that of the writer Jerome K. Jerome.
==Arms== {{Infobox COA wide |image = 450px |coronet = Coronet of a baron |orders = Order of the British Empire |escutcheon = Azure three Lozenges in fess Or each charged with a Mullet of the field accompanied by seven Cross Crosslets of the second four in chief and three in base all within a Bordure Ermine for difference |supporters = On either side a Wyvern Vert spouting Flames proper charged on the shoulder with a Wheel Or |crest = A Wheel Or upon it a Dragon Vert spouting Flames proper <ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.cracroftspeerage.co.uk/somervellharr1954.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141027075356/http://www.cracroftspeerage.co.uk/online/content/somervellharr1954.htm |archive-date=27 October 2014 |title=Somervell of Harrow, Baron (Law Lord) (UK, 1954 - 1960)}}</ref> }}
==References== {{Reflist}}
== External links == * {{hansard-contribs | mr-donald-somervell | Donald Somervell }}
{{s-start}} {{s-par|uk}} {{succession box | title = Member of Parliament for Crewe | years = 1931–1945 | before = John William Bowen | after = Scholefield Allen }} {{s-legal}} {{succession box | title = Solicitor General for England and Wales | before = Sir Boyd Merriman | after = Sir Terence O'Connor | years = 1933–1936 }} {{succession box | title = Attorney General for England and Wales | before = Sir Thomas Inskip | after = Sir David Maxwell Fyfe | years = 1936–1945 }} {{s-off}} {{succession box | title = Home Secretary | before = Herbert Morrison | after = Chuter Ede | years = 1945 }} {{s-end}}
{{HomeSecretary}} {{Churchill Caretaker Ministry}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Somervell, Donald Bradley}} Category:1889 births Somervell, Donald Bradley, Baron Category:Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford Category:Attorneys general for England and Wales Category:Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies Category:English King's Counsel Category:Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford Category:Knights Bachelor Somervell of Harrow Category:Members of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council Category:Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom Category:Middlesex Regiment officers Category:Ministers in the Chamberlain peacetime government, 1937–1939 Category:Ministers in the Chamberlain wartime government, 1939–1940 Category:Ministers in the Churchill caretaker government, 1945 Category:Ministers in the Churchill wartime government, 1940–1945 Category:Officers of the Order of the British Empire Category:Secretaries of state for the Home Department Category:Solicitors general for England and Wales Category:UK MPs 1931–1935 Category:UK MPs 1935–1945 Category:UK MPs who were granted peerages Category:20th-century English lawyers Category:People educated at Harrow School