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Sorry for the late posting of this, but I have not seen it discussed.

French writer, still with regiment, put on a uniform (7)

Still gives THO, RE short for Royal Engineers, then A then U (uniform) which gives Thoreau. Unfortunately Henry David Thoreau was American!
So how do we explain French?

Hi Graham, this was discussed on the following thread but with no satisfactory conclusion...

https://www.crosswordsolver.org/forum/733151/times-jumbo-cryptic-1387/

I see this now - you're quite right. Do you think the compiler ever looks at sites like this to help us out of our impasse?

Grahamr, I don't know about compilers looking at this website, but there is a Times crossword website that blogs, discusses and invites comments on puzzles. These don't appear until after the closing date if it's a prize puzzle. I think the Thoreau clue is from 1387 and any discussion will probably be next week. The site's easy enough to find - something like 'Times for the Times' or 'times-xwd-timeslivejournal'.

You're quite right Malone, the website can be found by typing Times for the Times, so I'll have to wait till next week. Meanwhile I see there is a website Lucian Poll's Web Ramblings, from which I extracted this:
French writer, still with regiment, put on a uniform (7)

Stlll gives THO, RE short for Royal Engineers, then A then U (uniform) which gives Thoreau' Unfortunately Henry David Thoreau was American!

So no help there then!

Sorry, got my C&P mixed up! Here's what Lucian said:
46. French writer, still with regiment, put on a uniform (7)

Answer: Henry David THOREAU. This may very well not be correct, as this particular Hank was a Yank, not French. Still, here goes. My solution is THO (i.e. “still”, as in a shortened form of “though”) followed by RE (i.e. “regiment”, specifically the Royal Engineers), then A and finally U (i.e. “uniform” – not an abbreviation explicitly recognised in my Chambers, but is used in the initials UBR – Uniform Business Rate), like so: THO-RE-A-U. Yuck, in a word.
[EDIT: Lee comes to the rescue again in the comments, clarifying the U. Thanks, Lee! – LP]