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I was away at the weekend and so have only just come round to tackling this puzzle. The grid fill was not too difficult but then I came to a brick wall.

I think I have done the right thing, but three of the five mutilated names strike me as very obscure. Is there some link between them? I did think I was fairly well-read in this area (and I have a substantial number of books devoted to it) but I would not have found what to do without a guess which turned out to be correct. However, thank goodness for Google for confirming that the names did make sense.

As so often, I now know what the link is, having typed all five into Google. So that fact that all five are names of ***** is actually irrelevant: indeed, in three cases the intended reference is to a person different from my initial guess.

Many thanks to Drxx (#28) and Hotelwhiskey (#30). Your hints have kick-started me again and I now think I can see where I should be going.

Thank you andyp @69 for “the blank cells are in rows containing the (mutilated) names” which got me over the line. And hats off to Ifor for such a well constructed puzzle.

I was just slightly disappointed that with one letter different in the missing seven, they could have been anagrammed to make a word meaning something which joins two parts together!

Having followed the advice of googling all five names, I think this is a wonderful example of thematically using disparate elements, and in such different ways. Thought it was lovely before that, but now I think it’s pretty sublime!

And I loved the key bearer :)

Thanks Ifor, made my day

One last thing as Colombo used to say, can anybody parse 6 across? Is the word final redundant or am I missing something?Is eccentricity an anagrind? Is made final the e? Is anybody out there?

Eccentricity is e

Made final is an instruction

Hope that helps!

Yes thanks that does help. Eccentricity doing two jobs there then. I agree about the key holder. Lovely clue

No, eccentricity's just doing a single job. It's not an anagram.