I enjoyed this one, even though I did not know much about the subject, and had to resort to web search for the original answers to the thematic clues that are referred to by the message. However, I have fallen one short. I knew 26d, certainly a famous example; search confirmed what I thought 1d must be, and I had to reverse engineer (or Lenurb according to a recent Guardian puzzle) 9d, although in retrospect it doesn't seem that difficult. That leaves 1a, which I still don't have. A gentle hint would be appreciated so I can put this baby to bed.