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Pendragon, my missing word has five letters, leading to a two-letter word inside the 23 A answer, reversed as it's 'recalled'.

PS I am quite often wrong!

Thanks. That doesn't quite fit my theories, but, as long as the answer is a plural noun, I think I shall go with what I have.

All right, (I think) I'm almost done now. The only clue I haven't parsed yet is 3d, where I've filled in the blank with 11a.

I have the last word as the definition, and I'm semi reading the wordplay as envelope of a three-letter revolutionary blank and eastern. But I can't fully see how it works.

Yes, that works, another three letter word for the answer to 11 but with a different meaning reversed with e in it.

gweilo, that's right - the blank is the slang version (a friend) around 'e'.

pendragon - after the 'in'+S, did you get the 'half hearted trainees', (which contains the 2 letters suggested by malone)? I think this is a 6 letter word with one of the two Es dropped (although the 2 Es are not dead centre).

Thanks drxx - my abysmal ignorance of cockney slang strikes again!

Drxx, I wasn't very happy with the 'trainees' bit as it didn't really follow 'half-hearted' as in normal clueing terms.

Yes, Cockney slang does appear quite often in crosswords - but the Londoners come in a very poor second to the Scots.

...by the way, the '...trainees' isn't a container, but follows malone's (reversed 2 letters) suggestion for the word that fits in the blank space.

Regarding the trainees, if their "heart" is TE, then half-hearted would keep the T, drop the E, and it works OK, I think?

@kilgore trout it's more normal to see "half-hearted" when the two letters are the same, so there's no doubt about which one to remove.

I think 23 is my least favourite clue in an otherwise excellent puzzle