Ok finished this absolute stinker - with some help from you guys. I found some of the clues literally impossible to solve except retrospectively. But the full parsing still eludes me in too many clues. Can you enlighten me?
1a Which logo, oddly, appears to apply still? HOLD GOOD
I can see perhaps some of the letters appearing in the clue but....
23a Frenchman who wrote that novel in English once EU goes for? EUGENE IONESCO
All I can get is EU and even that’s tenuous...
26a Foreigner needing our monarch’s confident expression of her power? AMERICAN
Wot?
2d To get protection from the cold, slowly follow one inside LAG
I considered a double meaning lag = one inside and insulate but it doesn’t follow for me.
4d Winning over jolly, round fellow in black cape OUTBALANCING
FFS! How are you to infer Outing, Alan , and how does BC follow from black cape in the normal world of abbreviations?
7d Ancestors, kind, accommodating people, finally at rest FOREMOTHERS
Oh come on!