Happy is the minority that has no history. The Jews of Britain, Dr Neustatter shows in this book, are impossible to count with any accuracy. They carry no identity cards, fill no special column of the census, have no special status defined by law. Once, at the beginning of their community in the seventeenth century, they would have wished for such a status. Luckily for themselves, they were never given it. They have had to contend, says Dr Parkes, with conservatism rather than official hostility or formal anti-semitism. They have increased, flourished, and absorbed what has sometimes been a trickle and sometimes a flood of new immigrants. There were 350 Jews in Britain in 1690, 35,000 in 1850, 350,000 in the late ‘thirties, 450,000 in 1950. One European Jew in 27 was British in the ‘thirties, one in six, after the Hitlerite massacres, in 1951.

Naturally, there have been times of difficulty. The great flight from Russia from the 1880’s to the first World War, which filled up trades like tailoring and the classic Jewish quarters of the East End, threatened to associate Jewry in the public mind with sweating, overcrowding, and undesirable aliens. But the crisis was handled skilfully and passed, thanks partly to the good sense and qualities of the immigrants themselves and partly to the cohesion, good management, and readiness to pay of the Jewish community previously established. The Jewish immigration as a whole has brought great economic benefits to Britain. Perhaps I see these through too rosy spectacles, for who is a Montague Burton Professor to bite the Chair he sits on? But look at commerce alone, think of a few of the Jewish names which have become household words, and it is obvious what the gain has been. Montague Burton is one: Marks and Spencer another: Lyons a third. These are the giants.