Do you remember Doctor Cummings who treated you when you had measles? Well, soon there will be no doctors. If you get sick, you will just pass over.’
‘If you have a Ticket,’ Peter said.
‘That’s right. And soon, having a Ticket will be the only thing anyone cares about. Not studying, not working, not doing the right thing. Nothing real.’ [p. 125]

The setting is an alternate Great Britain in the late 1930s. The Nazis never came to power, because Germany suffered a crushing defeat in WW1 -- partly as a result of the new ectotechnology. '...the ectotanks were created to break the deadlock of the trenches in the Great War: weapons that grew more powerful the more they killed". In the late 19th century, radio contact was made with the dead: now, half a century later, ectophones and ectomail connect the great metropolis of Summerland to the world of the living. In Summerland, Victoria reigns; in Summerland, the Presence watches every Soviet citizen. Anyone in Britain can, in theory, acquire a Ticket to prevent their dead spirit from Fading before it reaches Summerland. Anyone in the USSR knows that when they die, they will join the Presence.

What's the point in telling the old stories all over again in the same way? [loc. 549]

Natalie Haynes, author of The Amber Fury, Stone Blind and Divine Might (and a number of works that I haven't yet read) turns her attention to the myth of Jason and the Argonauts. I expected this to be another novel about Jason and Medea, but Haynes' focus is broader: No Friend to this House, with its multitude of female narrators, explores the lasting damage caused by the Argo's voyage and her crew's actions, as well as Medea's love for and abandonment by Jason. 

'...it was thrilling to down an enemy aircraft. This feeling increased with my catching sight that the German crew had bailed out. I hoped the pilot would be able to bail out as I hoped that’s how someone would think of me.’ [loc. 1623]

Nichol's aim is to tell the human story of the men and women who flew and maintained the iconic Spitfire: a timely endeavour, as he managed to interview quite a few WW2 veterans who died before the book was published.

The book is as interesting for its insights into 1930s Britain as for its accounts of aerial warfare and mechanical detail. Initially, pilots were young aristocrats -- male, of course: 'almost exclusively recruited from the distinguished drinking clientele of White’s'. There was, unsurprisingly, a lot of heavy drinking: If we were flying the next morning and still had a hangover we would plug into our Spitfire’s oxygen supply and this usually did the trick.’"

He was not good; had never aspired to be good. He had only ever wanted to be a jolly good fellow, and to be too good, like Percy, destroyed all chance of ever being jolly. Percy would have pulled the covers up over his head before he ever let his host’s wife kiss him, let alone kissed his host. [loc. 621]

A refreshing and sweet novella, setting Gawain and the Green Knight in wartime Britain. The squadron drink at the Green Dragon, and one night a man in green appears...

Gawain chats to the Bertilaks about crime novels and the Blitz; kisses his hostess, and then his host; and returns (or is returned) to his squadron with a green armband, because he has 'been raised with a great belief in magic' and is disinclined to refuse a gift that confers protection. And when the Bertilaks come visiting (with a gift of wild boar, which hasn't been hunted in Britain for four centuries) he confronts them with his anger and grief that it was just a game...

A delightful read, which I wish I'd read at Christmas! The updated setting works very well, and Gawain is vulnerable, likeable and better at talking about his feelings than the original. But then, it is a different time.