This textbook has everything that you would want in English Judaica. It was written by an important Anglo-Jewish teacher and scholar, it was printed in Whitechapel at the Narod Press, it was published by Shapiro Valentine when they were known as a bookshop, and it was “seen through the press” by Chimen Abramsky, son of Dayan Abramsky. It is also a nice book with clear charts and tables of history.
Reverend Joseph Halpern was born in the East End of London in 1907 and entered Jews College after study at the Davenant Foundation School in Whitechapel, and the Yeshivah Etz Chaim. he gained a BA from London University in semitics with first class honours, and in 1933, his Jews College Ministers Certificate.
He started Jewish Youth Study Groups in 1943, during the Second World War in England. Their aim was to give some Jewish education to the large numbers of Jewish children evacuated during the war to places where there were few, if any, practicing Jews. When the war was over, it was decided to continue the study groups, to encourage secondary school children to pursue their Jewish education.
Joseph Halpern was head of the Hebrew Department of the Jews Free School in Camden Town, where he was apparently known as “Uncle Joe”. He was a lecturer at Jews’ College, London, honorary secretary of Jews’ College Institute for Training of Teachers and joint honorary secretary for the Friends of the Hebrew Language Academy. He held these posts until he emigrated to Israel in 1970. He was the founder and chairman of the Bible Readers’ Union and he published a number of educational works. His working papers for a history of Jewish education in England are in the University of Southampton Special Collections.
He died in Jerusalem in 1983. His son is Professor Vivian Halpern of the Physics Department of Bar Elan University.
Jewish Miscellanies 
How could he write in the preface that the “worst did not happen”. ?
I think he meant that “the worst” was Hitler winning the war and defeating the British.