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Categories: 1889 births | 1960 deaths | Secretaries of State for the Home Department (UK) | Peers | British MPs
Donald Bradley Somervell, Baron Somervell
Donald Bradley Somervell, Baron Somervell (August 24 1889-November 18 1960) was a British politician.
The son of the Master and Bursar of Harrow School, Somervell was educated there before reading chemistry at Oxford. He then joined the Inner Temple but his legal training was interupted by the outbreak of the First World War. In 1916 he was called to the Bar and practiced in the chambers of William Jowitt, specialising in commercial law matters arising out of the Treaty of Versailles.
In 1929 he entered politics. Although a Liberal by inclination, the decline of that party and his admiration for the-then Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin led him to instead join the Conservative Party and he stood unsuccessfully for Crewe in the 1929 general election. He won the seat in the 1931 election and held it for the next fourteen years.
In 1933 he became Solicitor General, followed three years later by a promotion to Attorney General. In this latter post he served for no less than nine years, during which he oversaw crises such as the Abdication Crisis of Edward VIII. In 1945 he was briefly Home Secretary in Winston Churchill's "Caretaker" government. The government lost power and Somervell lost his seat in the 1945 general election and he returned to the law. In 1946 he became a Lord Justice of Appeal. In 1951 Churchill returned to power but passed over Somervell's claims to the Lord Chancellorship. In 1954 Somervell became a Law Lord. He retired in 1960, shortly before his death.
|- style="text-align: center;"
| width="30%" |Preceded by:
Sir Thomas Inskip
| width="40%" style="text-align: center;" |Attorney General for England and Wales
1936–1945
| width="30%" |Succeeded by:
Sir David Maxwell Fyfe
|- style="text-align: center;"
| width="30%" |Preceded by:
Herbert Stanley Morrison
| width="40%" style="text-align: center;" |Home Secretary
1945
| width="30%" |Succeeded by:
James Chuter Ede
Categories: 1889 births | 1960 deaths | Secretaries of State for the Home Department (UK) | Peers | British MPs
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