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Thank you, Quisling😀 Now for the final push.

Delighted to have persevered with this. Many thanks for the nudges.

Found this very painful. Enjoyable first three hours solving vast majority of clues, spotting quote, theme, several examples. Tortuous last three hours getting last 8 clues and last two examples. All entries jumbled should be outlawed in my humble opinion.

Don't understand the wordplay for 34, would appreciate an explanation.

Thanks

SH: half a tusk and shed makes an expression to pooh-pooh as in the tosh and piffle sense.

It also makes sense as tush (a small tusk) + half of 'fallen off'.

Granama1, just a belated apology for not responding quickly to your request for enlightenment re 9d, but a 24-hour power outage kept me offline. I see your query has already been answered anyway.

Hi Murky, no worries...I got there in the end (:o) It's nice that people actually do help at all, never mind that responses aren't on demand! I remember asking for a hint on another forum and found out that they only post on it to tell each other that they've completed it. It's much better on here...I actually learn how to improve my solving.

I really enjoyed this one. I was introduced to this author by my grandmother in my teens when I was ill in bed with tonsillitis, and thence I read as many of his books I could get hold of. Nice to have one I don’t need to research on the internet. There were some good films and television series of the books back in the day.

Not a great fan of all jumbles but knowing the location of several letters and words appearing in the columns quite quickly made it a relatively quick and satisfying solve. Do I assume the title refers to the theme's 2 occupations or am I missing something obvious?...

That’s my assumption crates, and/or that much of his output in one occupation drew on the other. I agree that the fixed letters and huuuuge thematic coverage (all but 37 cells are thematic) made this less frustrating than all-jumbles can sometimes be. I enjoyed it. I too have always found it amusing that the prize offered is the one thing one must surely already have in order to complete the puzzles! Hasn’t stopped me trying, though... :-)