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I’m obviously being very dim as everyone seems to have found the quatrain without difficulty. I’ve got what looks like Middle English which would seem to lead to an obvious work, but I am probably fixated on this one now. I am happy with most of the moved letters but the first three are not helpful and putting various strings into Google has not revealed anything. Would be grateful for a nudge. Thank you.

There are some unusual words and spellings in the quatrain, Annie. A search, using quotes, for the last three words revealed by the moved letters should get you there. Bear in mind that the middle of these words is spelt without its usual final vowel.

Thank you. I had got at least one of the letters wrong (of course). Now for some grid staring! Will have time as won’t attempt 4686.

I found this one tough going, with tricky clues and a lot of unchecked cells, but satisfying. The grid staring took a while until I spotted what was going on in the another column, at which point I started playing the song on YouTube: something I’d recommend to anyone still trying to work out the endgame!

There’s just one clue that’s niggling me: 36, the pain from climbing. I have the solution, obvs, and see the definition and know what letter moves, but can’t quite figure the wordplay…

Mooncow, re # 36 parsing
end of Hamish + 1 letter meaning 'from', (in Chambers with an accent) + abb. for a foreign country (1)

Ah, yes, it was the accent that fooled me: thanks mattrom all clear now. And I’ve realised that when you look up a single letter in the Chambers app it shows you various entries for “x”, “X”, “x.”, etc, but not accented forms — duly noted for the future!

I solved all the clues last week without any real queries, so reasonably confident up to this point I've done things correctly. Since then I've returned periodically to the puzzle in the hope of a flash of inspiration for what to do next. So far to no avail. Each row has at least two squares empty (and in one case four) because I can't be sure about letter placement in the jumbled across clues. I have spotted what the thematic column is trying to spell, so have inferred a couple of letter placements from that. I got the quatrain quite early on. If I understand correctly the thematic column acts as a sort of spine, so that when the rows are ordered correctly some kind of message can be read from the top down in each row across the thematic column. Which means I should be able to spot some sort of coherence in each row across that column. I'm damned if I can, even allowing that the columns either side each have five letters missing. Before I pass the point of no return with a pair of scissors, does it sound as if I'm on the right track? And will the scissors really transform my perception of the puzzle? Obviously, seven of the 11 rows could be in more than one place, given the repetition of some of the letters in the thematic column, which presumably complicates matters further...

Yes, you are on the right track although I would not call the end result a 'message'.

If you know the thematic column then you know the correct placement for all of the rows except those with duplicate letters in that column.

It might help to draw yourself another grid, 11x12, omitting that column, filling in what you know.

Ah! So the letters in the column are not included in the thematic items? I shall revisit with that precious insight...

Yes, the preamble said the thematic items are "around the column"