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Very good, Jono. I think I understand all of this but for one final wrinkle. As you’ve no doubt gathered six-letter answers are entered using a substitution cipher. It probably has a keyword, though I haven’t worked it out yet. The letters map as follows:

A V
B W
C ?
E ?
F O
H S
I N
J P
K Y
L X
M R

So just the C and E are undetermined. Brute force tools aren’t very helpful with names, but I’ll persevere, unless a better cryptographer than me can explain!

Oops, I missed out T mapping to U

I haven’t looked at this in any detail but as they’re all six letter answers, perhaps a Playfair cipher is being used and you might be able to brute force that using a decoder or try using the play name as the code

I have tried that, Candledave, without success. I too wondered about the letter pairs. The play name doesn’t work, nor does the name of the compiler (I suspect), the last words, Guardian, Genius, or the date. If the C mapped to E the cipher would at least be internally consistent and require nothing else. Absent a keyword that’s what I’d probably go with

A big thank you to all of you.

My problem was not only finding a cipher or any way to enter the thematic answers, it was mainly cold-solving them. I drew a blank every time I tried. After reading some of your comments, I sat down and solved some of them. Funny how these wordplays seem easy now...

I still have work (and parsing) to do, but your comments really helped.

If my 14a is correct, I find that C maps to Y, leaving me with E (which I can't convert).
If it is just a letter substitution (not a 21d cipher - how relevant that would have been), not knowing what to do with E is rather embarrassing.
Surely there must be a reason for those substitutions. Something the instructions would have helped with.

Apart from that, I can't quite parse 23d. And I'm not completely sure about my parsing of 5d.

Manu, I thought 14a was hidden in the clue, with definition “by the road”. Hence I reasoned Y mapped to K.

In 23d, aside from being the name of the explorer, the two-word phrase is often used in Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm. As in “I mun go into town this morning”. Country indicates it’s dialectical.

I thought 5d was just a charade for how one might say a second in speech.

I wasn’t totally convinced by 28a, though I assumed the answer related to guns

28a could also begin Sporting, of course. To my eye it fits the definition better, but The Pink ‘Un ceased publication in 1932, so I don’t know

I find it curious that all the map-to letters are in the second half of the alphabet and the map-from letters are in the first - there's no eg C maps to F.

You're absolutely right about 14a. I thought the first 4 words were a way of defining a card (as in a yellow card when the referee books a player) with ca/circa = by and rd = road. Not very satisfying though.
Your explanation is much more logical. I can't believe I missed the hidden solution.

I have "sporting" for 28a. I thought the whole solution was what you were most likely to find written down next to a stopwatch.