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I can't recall ever having encountered Vagans before but I thought this was a fine effort.

The words created by the extra letters did initially cause me to go in pursuit of untamed geese but then I spotted a name in the grid and, when I applied the words to it, all became clear.

Thanks to Vagans for a most enjoyable puzzle:-)

Brendan, you encountered Vagans at the end of September - he was the setter of Inquisitor 1716!

I quite enjoyed this puzzle, but it wasn't the stiffest of challenges.

Of course, Excess Baggage, the Dante puzzle, thank you Malone. I should have remembered as I'm currently listening to the audio book of Inferno, although I've listened to a couple of selected passages from about 4 or 5 different translations and it's staggering how different all are from each other - my own fault for not learning Italian.

PS Did you see "it" made another appearance, and in the Listener too! Perhaps the setters responsible should have their own designated circle in Hell 🥵

PPS I shouldn't have that, I think Vagans is a Bishop, perhaps he could just repent 🤔

Thanls, Brendan - and sorry, I meant to mention your earlier post (on Friday or Saturday) about my detested word. I think there's some sort of commission deal going on, though I don't know who's funding it. Or maybe the setters are involved in a little private competition, to see who can use it (!) most often?

Your reading/listening material sounds a bit on the heavy side for me!

Oh, far from it Malone, I'm thoroughly engrossed in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy at the moment but I do like to listen to short passages from other books on my phone as I drift off to sleep - although so much depends on the narrators voice 😃

I didn't see the original discussion about the pronoun, Malone, but your dislike of "it" makes me suspect you're one of the knights who say Ni!

Before I draw a line under this one I have a couple of queries with the definitions in two of the clues -

14d - the wordplay leads to the definition being "immortal" which is just so vague and also the clue's last word is "sage" and I've just looked up the answer on Wiki and ???? is, among other things, the ????? of wisdom - a sage!

37a - The definition is "layer" - what about the male ones?

I know I'm being picky, dare I say pedantic, but don't cryptic crosswords and especially barred puzzles rely heavily on the exactness of each part of the wordplay and definitions?

Have I read these wrong? - I sort of hope I have.

immortal=god and layer=bird are pretty standard cryptic-ese. And in this day and age can we definitely say that there are no males that identify as layers?

For 14, ORVAL=archaic for sage, so the surface works quite well in this case I think

Loge, I've been puzzling over your comment, but I haven't deciphered it yet!

PS I wouldn't mind It so much if...
a. We were still living in the mid 1950s or 1960s and/ or
b. It didn't pop up with such monotonous regularity.

Loved this - many thanks to Vagans.

All done but struggling unsuccessfully to parse 16a:

Ian after a Scotch on way to being drunk for ever (7)

Any pointers much appreciated.