DANIEL SONABEND’S We Fight Fascists: The 43 Group and their Forgotten Battle for Post-War Britain (Verso) tells the stories of the Jewish ex-servicemen and women who came back from the second world war only to find that fascist gangs were still harassing Jewish communities back home in Britain.

The book recounts the heroic struggles of these Jewish veterans who challenged the fascists, often at considerable risk to themselves, given the level of violence that the gangs employed.

I was shocked to realise how little I had known about the continuance of far-right violence and the influence of Oswald Mosley in the post-war period and the threads of fascism, anti-semitism and racism that run through our history.  

The 43 Group’s extraordinary resilience and bravery deserve to be far more widely appreciated.

I missed the novel Milkman (Faber & Faber) by Anna Burns when it was first published, before going on to win the Man Booker Prize in 2018.

The judges described it as “both frightening and inspirational, stylistically utterly distinctive … a wholly original take on Ireland in the time of the Troubles through the mind of a young girl.”

And so it is, as well as being a fantastic read. Quirkily funny, totally engaging and seriously thought-provoking, it’s one of my favourite contemporary novels.

I appreciated even more a second reading of Jack Jones’s autobiography Union Man (Collins). The son of a Liverpool docker, he led an extraordinary life.

He fought in the Spanish civil war before being wounded at the Battle of the Ebro in 1938 and went on to become a key figure in the TGWU, organising in the car industry before becoming general secretary in 1968.

He was such a powerful progressive force, strengthening the union from the bottom up and, after retirement, he worked  tirelessly for pensioners’ rights.

Although once described as “the most powerful man in Britain,” his autobiography reveals the  humility and radiant goodwill that were his hallmarks.

A generous-minded and widely appreciated comrade, he comes over as a true democrat and there is so much for us to learn from his autobiography.