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Thanks to all here for helping me to get over the finishing line. A tough one, to put it mildly!

Unclued, I think the alternative title may reassure solvers who are bothered as to whether to go forwards or backwards in the various sets, or sequences. The original title was most unhelpful and the preamble didn’t make it clear whether ‘the correct way to be deduced’ applied to each item independently.

Yes rad I agree with you. Often the titles of the puzzles are the last thing I understand and sometimes give no help at all. I think thepreamble indicated that the forward or back counting would have to be deduced in each case.

Still struggling! I've solved 1ac and 19ac, but have no idea what replaces them. My only thought for 19 is a classic ( is that suitably cryptic?!), but can' see the connection.

As for the hidden word......

Hi Dylan, I haven't figured 19a out yet, but for 1a and it's replacement look at previous Grand National winners.

I’ve managed to fill most of the grid but am completely stuck on the actual entries for 6a, 24d, 34a and 34d. In fact I’ve Googled every permutation of 24d (ie A to Z for the missing letter) and nothing comes up. How many hyphens in it? The wordplay for 34a eludes me, so I cannot get the first letter for 34d. If anyone is still out there can you help please.

I totally agree with all the comments wrt the obscurity of some of the sets and the difficulty of the clues to the 10 non-entries. My grid staring ability is certainly improving as I saw the hidden word and instruction quite quickly. However, I spent wasted hours researching Scottish mountains, followed by mountains of the British isles and I also now have a useless encyclopaedic knowledge of a three times Oscar winner with a hyphenated surname. I think some way of cryptically indicating the sets would have both been a lot fairer and would have lessened the tedium of googling stabs in the dark.

Hi Xij, for 24d the original answer is the name of a renowned poet, you need to find someone who had something in common with him.

Dylan, the only link I've come up with for19a is that there's another standard character (Il C.......) who wears a s....... uniform. However, why they should be a specific distance apart is anyones guess. It's rather nebulous so probably wrong.

Granama, I've got Shakespearean stuff for 19. The clue answer begins with a famous 'Peter'. After that there's a five-letter word for 'stock' (new to me), with 'nothing' in it.

Hi Malone, thanks. I have solved the clue and worked out what the replacement must be (mainly thanks to this thread, ditto several others). Just having problems linking the two. I'll follow up on the Shakespearean angle.
As Gitto says, there's been a lot of fruitless delving but, on the other hand, I am now replete with useless knowledge. eg thanks to Brewers I now know that Harlequin may be a corruption of Erl King. Not sure how I'll use the info but browsing Brewer's is fun 😊