THE GOOD Solider Sam is the memoir of the late Sam Berkovitz, who with the help of author and journalist Simon Blumenfeld — also now sadly deceased — tells a life story which begins in 1905 in Stepney, where he was born to Jewish immigrant parents from Romania.

[[{"fid":"14124","view_mode":"inlineright","fields":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-inlineright","data-delta":"1"}}]]He spent the majority of his life either in the poorly paid lower end of the tailoring trade or signing on the dole when work dried up. Living with his wife in the same humble flat for 60 years, even in relatively prosperous times they rarely had more than a few pounds to rub together.

Although the book makes clear that Berkovitz viewed his life as half-full rather than half-empty, those straitened circumstances led him almost inevitably into the arms of the Communist Party of Great Britain, of which he was an active but non-conformist member for many years, and with which he worked on rent strikes, the Battle of Cable Street and support for anti-Franco forces in the Spanish Civil War.