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OptO. Link with the relevant verse, he was the pioneer. The same verse links with his “mate”.

Many thanks Loge and Simplesimon. I had made life difficult for myself by wrongly identifying the spare word in the Rees-Mogg clue. Once I had corrected this, all became clear.

Got there in the end, helped by the one clue that doesn't have anywhere else to go, though I still "cold solved" most of it.
It was probably asking too much, but it's slightly disappointing that the entry of the name leaves you with non-words.

OptO. 😄no worse than us. When compiling the second message, we forgot a relevant pair of letters and ended up down a rabbit hole that ended in the Ecuadorean Embassy. You’ll see what we mean! Doh!

Very doable - with just the final endplay being a bit fiddly: a clue missed out and a miss-transposition made it all the more difficult. Tried to eyeball the anagram but got stuck looking for a famous Alan...

As someone not brainy enough to do all Listeners, but brainy enough to like a well constructed puzzle I did find this rather exhilarating, most enjoyable. Though I do echo the comment about the correction of the top row yielding non-words - strangely inelegant in an otherwise deliciously constructed puzzle.

I'm surprised that so many people have expressed a problem working out the second hint. I certainly made things difficult for myself by looking at the second hint first, and thus having absolutely no idea what the last seven words referred to; but once I looked at the first hint, the required "reference book" and the exact part to be perused became clear. A quick trip to Wiki gave me the second name, ending with a straightforward word search.

I agree that the replacement of the top row with an anagram - leaving only a couple of the down lights as real words - was a bit naff; the usual 'entered below the grid' would have been more satisfactory. But a neatly constructed and enjoyable puzzle, nevertheless.