TLS Crossword 1147 by Broteas – October 21, 2016

A question arose in the thread for cryptic 26529 (September 30th, here is the relevant part:  http://times-xwd-times.livejournal.com/1601189.html?thread=59499173#t59499173)  which I raise here.  It was opined by a couple of the contributors that when we bloggers reproduce the clues for individual puzzles, in addition to the answers and explanations, this is tantamount to piracy or plagiarism.  These are freighted terms, and donning my ancient legal wig I disagree because the attribution is always clear and it would seem to me to be fair use and comment.  It wasn’t worth having a squabble over but in case it arises again, do we have an editorial opinion?

The festive userpic is in recognition of our 40th Wedding Anniversary this month.  Definitions (where appropriate) in italics underlined.  Answers in bold caps.

Across
1.  A French poet – chap eating garlic? (8)
MALHERBE.  MALE=chap containing (eating) HERB=garlic.  Francois de.  Influential 16th to 17th Century poet.  Not sure I’d call garlic a herb – but then what would I call it….  In any case the ? covers it.
5.  Trance induced by Proust translation (6)
STUPOR.  One knows the feeling.  Anagram (translation) of PROUST (Marcel, 19th to early 20th Century French author).  I’m sorry to say I’ve never finished either the original or the translation of his chef d’oeuvre.  If only it had been A La Recherche du Trump Perdu.  (This will be my only political comment, although I had considered deploying my userpic of Whistler’s mother to denote grief).
10.  In hand-shaking I identify Morris the preacher (5)
DINAH.  Anagram (shaking) of IN HAND.  Itinerant Wesleyan preacher in George Eliot’s Adam Bede (spoiler alert, reader she marries him, eventually).
11.  Put Lawrence and Muslim back in restricted quarters (9)
ROOMETTES.  SET=put.  TE=Lawrence.  MOOR=Muslim.  All reversed (back).  I think of this as an American term for a sleeping compartment in a long-distance train.  They do still exist (just) in the US.  Some years back I took one from NYC to Montreal in the middle of winter – it was a blast.  There was a proper dining car too.
12.  Study a Mediterranean location, and its description by J.G. Ballard (8,6)
CONCRETE ISLAND.  CON=study.  CRETE ISLAND=Med. location.  20th Century sci-fi author.  The island in this case is is in the middle of a motorway.
14.  Germaine’s female, and Terence’s male (7)
EUNUCHS.  Germaine Greer’s 1970 feminist tract and the Roman dramatist Terence’s comedy version of a play by the Greek Menander.
16.  He, thee and me could make 18, 3 or something similar (7)
INTEGER.  Oh dear.  The answer was obvious but not the explanation.  I know that numbers make my brain shut down for routine maintenance but here we are 3 weeks later and I still don’t see it.  See galspray  infra.
18.  Revolutionary band’s administration (3,4)
RED TAPE.  RED=revolutionary.  TAPE=band.  I doubt if you would find much of this in actual existence around Whitehall any more but the metaphorical image of bureaucracy remains.  When I started as a fledgling barrister in Chancery decades ago we did indeed still get our instructions from solicitors tied up this way, except that the tape wasn’t really red – more a sort of slightly faded Schiaparelli pink.
19.  Bird – she takes Trelawney’s heart (7)
KESTREL.  Hidden (heart) in [ta]KES TREL[awney’s].  Very neatly disguised clue of this kind.
20.  A lady with timber in short supply, but one who ran a famous workshop (4,10)
JOAN LITTLEWOOD.  JOAN=lady – one who is low on timber.  Innovative 20th Century British theatre director, best known to those of my vintage for Oh, What A Lovely War!
24.  Principal subject of the Hornblower series? (4,5)
MAIN THEME.  Series of yarns by C.S. Forester about Horatio Hornblower, naval officer during the Napoleonic Wars.  The subject or theme of the books could be said to be the Main or ocean.  I kept thinking there must be more to this.
25.  “Belief in progress is a doctrine of –s and Belgians” (Baudelaire, translated by Isherwood) (5)
IDLER.  From 19th Century French poet Charles Baudelaire’s diaries (and that’s Christopher Isherwood).  He goes on to say that it’s the individual relying on his neighbours to do all the work.  I don’t know why he had it in for Les Belges..
26.  The final event at Blandings (6)
SUNSET.  Unfinished last novel in the Blandings series by P.G. Wodehouse.
27.  Job – for a mutinous sailor in Treasure Island (8)
ANDERSON.  Boatswain turned pirate in R.L. Stevenson’s classic.

Down
1.  A flash of French style (4)
MODE.  MO=flash.  DE=of, en Francais.
2.  Secure, from approval in this ancient religious tract … (4,2,3)
LAND OF NOD.  LAND=secure.  OF=from.  NOD=approval.  Not that kind of tract, an area of land East of Eden in Genesis.
3.  … and this Roman moral standard (5)
ETHIC.  In Latin ET=and, HIC=this.
4.  Kit in certain London tearooms, one described in Dombey and Son (6,8)
BARNET SKETTLES.  A tearoom in the London Borough of Barnet would probably have kettles.  Dickens describes Sir Barnet as a self-consequential and pressingly sociable baronet from Fulham.
6.  The weird sister – Shakespeare character who talks of raising devils (9)
THERSITES.  THE with anagram (weird) of SISTER.  Unpleasant fool in Troilus and Cressida.
7.  Favourite god of Heliopolis, a Middle Eastern city (5)
PETRA.  PET=favourite.  RA=sun god of ancient Egypt.  Rose Red city of the ancient world in Jordan.
8.  Bitter spinster, showing low cunning in part (4,6)
ROSA DARTLE.    ROLE=part, containing SAD=low and ART=cunning.  Our other Dickens reference, from David Copperfield.  She’s eaten up with rage over her unrequited love for Steerforth who mistreats her.
9.  Dick travelled North to consume everything in a cocktail (8,6)
RODERICK ALLEYN.  Dick, as in sleuth, shamus or detective.  In this case the Chief Inspector from the Ngaio Marsh stories.  RODE=travelled N[orth] containing (to consume) ALL=everything in a RICKEY=cocktail made with gin or bourbon.
13.  Kings associated with ambassadors and a princess (5,5)
HENRY JAMES.  Europeanized 19th to early 20th Century American author.  His long convoluted sentences were the bane of generations of English A level students.  Our lot “did” Portrait of a Lady but it was decades before I appreciated it.    It took a while for me to throw all the usual crossword conventions for kings, ambassadors and princesses out the window and start again.  The novel The Ambassadors describes all the allurements of the Old World for an American.  James’s Princess Casamassima would seem to be the princess, although an American girl married to an Italian prince features in The Golden Bowl.
15.  Webster, possibly a friend of Wilbur in a 22 work (9)
CHARLOTTE.  Lovely clue.  The webster is Charlotte the spider, from Charlotte’s Web, who weaves messages into her web to save her friend Wilbur the pig from the slaughterhouse.  22d here is the American author E.B. White.  The book had to be banned from bedtime stories in this house because the death of Charlotte towards the end left our girls weeping and their mother sniffing.
17. Waterspouts ascending torment Jerome’s idle sea captain (9)
GARGOYLES.  RAG=torment reversed (ascending).  GOYLES=character from Three Men on The Bummel, 1900 novel by Jerome K. Jerome, better known for Three Men In A Boat.  I got completely distracted by the American meaning of “waterspout” which is a sort of marine tornado.  I saw one once from the comparative safety of an office tower in Florida and hope I never see another.
21.  One crossing a foreign river was a legendary poet (5)
ARION.  AN=one containing (crossing) RIO=river in Spanish.  Ancient Greek poet from Lesbos and Corinth, supposedly responsible for the dithyramb form.
22.  Like some knights, or one who wrote about them (5)
WHITE.  In business, a white knight is an investor regarded as friendly by a corporate board in a takeover.  T.H. White (the other White) is the 20th Century British author best known for The Once And Future King and The Sword In The Stone – a re-working of the Arthurian legends.
23.  Ted’s tough kind of man – or woman (4)
IRON.  As in the sci fi novel by the Poet Laureate Ted Hughes.  Also a male or female athlete who competes in rigorous tests of stamina.