Relax, ease your gussets and indulge in a picnic for your brain-gland.

Rocket-ships invaded by aliens
Secret government satellites plummeting
Insane Cold War time-travel
Victorian flying-saucers
Elderly ladies and moon landings
Awfully embarrassing royal "first contact"
Edwardian evolution gone splendidly alien
Love, icebergs, ocean liners and ghosts
Crash-test dogs speaking Latin AND Klingon
A viral inconvenience escaping from a lab
Exceedingly logical robotic detectives
...and even a few adventurous medieval monks.

This book is not entirely serious, and it's not entirely not serious. There's only one cat (briefly) mentioned in the whole book, velociducks do not hunt in packs around English village ponds, and the Moon landing actually cost England a lot more than two hundred and fifty quid. Think Ealing comedy written by old-fashioned chaps in white laboratory coats, some of whom were on psychotropic substances, some of whom were quite sober, and you won't go far wrong. It may be British science fiction, but the science is entirely implausible - and that's really what makes it such fun.