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Thanks for the nudges offered above.
IMHO this puzzle was a masterpiece - and in a week when the Listener went all numerical a delight to have this challenge.
It's hard to imagine how more thematic material could have been packed in. Although the final step of filling in the 8 cells below the grid was relatively straightforward it did confirm all the penny drop discoveries along the way.
Many thanks Sauce. I'll be looking out for your next one.

I can't unscramble the final step. I've filled the grid, decoded the twenty letter theme, and identified the seventeen cells to be highlighted. But I have no idea what the context to be encoded and entered in the boxes is. The eight letters I discarded include two (one used twice) not in the theme, so I don't have any idea how to encode them. I can't see any connection between the modified entries. And I have no idea what 395 is supposed to represent. Help!

The context is the setting for the longer highlighting and a feature of its landscape is a ''395'' (giving you the missing letter for ''5'').
It shouldn't be possible to resolve the clashes until you've confirmed the context.

Hope it’s ok to ask for help now it’s the end of the weekend. I’ve got a full grid, found the eponym and surname. Got the missing letters arranged into a symbol. Got the theme and code, and found 7 of 8 clashes but no idea about the context, or how to resolve clashes. I have D/R A/I M/H D/L E/O T/S R/E What’s missing or where have I gone wrong? Thanks for any help offered.

It was possible, because looking at possible eight letter combinations of the clashing letters, one thematic term stood out.

There are two lots of E/O clashes.

These are all correct. One of these clashes is repeated elsewhere; since I don't know which you have found, I can't tell you where the other one is.

luftmensch - has my answer given you the connection for the clashing entries?

Yes, thank you. I already had all of these as entries, but didn't understand the connection until your hint.

The encoded context is not very exciting, is it?

No, luftmensch - it's a bit of an anticlimax (but a good puzzle all the same, I think).