Sommerfield's first two books,
They Die Young (1930) – which was published in the United States as
The Death of Christopher – and
Behind the Scenes (1934) drew upon his experiences at sea and as a stage hand. 1936 saw the publication of
May Day, which is considered Sommerfield's most important work. The novel was published by the Communist Party's publishing house, and describes a few days in the lives of protagonist James Seton and various other people around London leading up to a general strike and a political breakthrough for Communism in Britain. During World War II he served as an aircraft support mechanic in
Burma and
India. This wartime service in Asia with the RAF provided the inspiration for some of his best short stories, collected after the war as
The Survivors (1947). In 1937 Sommerfield published
Volunteer in Spain, which was an account of his time in Spain.
George Orwell called the memoir a "piece of sentimental tripe", while others praised it and called Sommerfield "an excellent writer". The book was dedicated to Cornford, who was killed in Spain in December 1936.
Malcolm Lowry, a close friend of Sommerfield's, counted him as an important influence, and dedicated his poem
Song About Madrid, Useful Any Time to him and
Julian Bell. Perhaps the most widely read of Sommerfield's works was
Trouble in Porter Street, published in 1939. The Communist Party asked Sommerfield to write a manual about how to organise a
rent strike. He wrote a short story for this purpose instead which was published cheaply as a pamphlet and sold in tens of thousands. Sommerfield was also active in the
Mass Observation project and took the lead in the research, largely in
Bolton, for
The Pub and the People. Throughout the war and in the following decade, Sommerfield continued to write for Communist and progressive periodicals and literary journals, including
John Lehmann's
New Writing journal and was involved with
Mass Observation. He worked largely in documentary films. Among his writing,
The Adversaries (1952) was a historical novel based on the life of the mathematician
Evariste Galois, while
North West Five (1960) was a novel about a young working class couple struggling to make their own way in post-war
Kentish Town in north London. ==Personal life==