A book titled The Left's Jewish Problem (Biteback Publishing, £12.99) does not exactly promise a light-hearted read. And Dave Rich's study of antisemitism and anti-Zionism duly offers a thoroughly depressing trawl through the archives of Jew-hatred.

It is the book's sub-title - Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Anti-Semitism - that will pique the interest of a wider audience.

Since Mr Corbyn originally stood for the Labour Party's leadership contest in June last year, I have lost count of the number of stories the JC has published about the subsequent antisemitism crisis engulfing his party.

The book covers such figures as Ken Livingstone, George Galloway, David Ward, Ghada Kharmi, Naz Shah, Gerry Downing and many others who have featured in these pages not only this past year, but across four decades.

Rich spends his working life as the deputy communications director of the Community Security Trust, but has recently completed a PhD on the growth of left-wing anti-Zionism in Britain.

Based on his PhD thesis, the tone is academic

When Corbyn unexpectedly won the leadership a year ago, Dr Rich presumably didn't know whether to laugh or cry; his book would suddenly become a must-read for political commentators, but at what cost?

As he diplomatically points out, "it has left me in the position of having something new to say about an old subject".

Rich does well to avoid his 280 pages becoming submerged under contemporary, Corbyn-related cases. Much of the book is based on his PhD thesis, and the prose is academic in tone.

A prominent theme is the question of whether the leftist movements of the 1970s and 1980s were intent more on laying the foundations for a Palestinian state than on knocking down Israel. Acronyms fly freely as the National Union of Students, Stop the War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, British Anti-Zionist Organisation and other groups come under Rich's microscope.

But it is Rich's analysis of the malignancy of the left's antisemitism that gives most pause for thought, giving as it does an admirably clear explanation of how the left got itself into a position where senior figures repeatedly appear to excuse away quite blatant Jew-hatred.

"The possibility that somebody might believe antisemitic things about Jews without feeling any personal animosity towards them is not considered," Dr Rich writes of recent cases.

The British left has thus become, he concludes, "a place where there is antisemitism without antisemites".

Given the current situation, Dave Rich should have plenty of new material to evaluate in the years to come and we can at least hope for a continued, impressive analysis helpful to those targeted by such hatred.