TLS 1118 by Myrtilus : A birthday treat

Across

1  Hates working for someone who might wield the axe (8)
ABHORSON The name of the executioner in Measure for Measure, an example of the Bard’s mighty skill in creating apposite epithets, a cross between “abhors” and “whoreson”. A pleasant character? Probably not. Hates: ABHORS + working: ON
5  One of the Ladies’ Day girls recalled longing to embrace men  (6)
DOREEN   Ladies’ Day is the fictional magazine in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, and Doreen loosely one of its staff.  NEED reversed about O(ther) R(anks)
9  Dido’s gem replaced 20 and more of similar origins  (8)
DEMIGODS Clue 20 is AENEAS, whose father was Prince Anchites of Dardania and his mother Aphrodite, hence the Best of Both status. It looks like an anagram, and it is, of DIDO’S GEM
10  Tory party name for a political novelist (6)
CONDON, Richard, author of “The Manchurian Candidate”. A straightforward working of CON(servative)+DO+N(ame)
12  Resin used in ink made by the Spanish music publishers in the past  (5)
ELEMI. Turned up in 26353 on 7^th March, so don’t complain. A straight cryptic: EL, “the” in Spanish, and EMI, was the provider of much of the soundtrack of all our yesterdays. Obit 2012
13  A character represented to the audience what Briony was looking for (9)
ATONEMENT, from the book of the same name by Ian McEwan, which stars Briony. The film’s pretty good too. “A character represented” gives the soundalike A TONE MEANT
14  Cabinet Minister broke up with this short Bond girl  (6,6)
WHISKY GALORE  A great clue, if you know that the SS Cabinet Minister is the name given by Compton McKenzie to the real life SS Politician, shipwrecked on Eriskay (Todday in the book and film), kindly donating its cargo of whisky to the locals. One of the finer Ealing Comedies. “Short” might just as well be whisky, and Pussy Galore is the Bond Girl in Goldfinger (Honor Blackman)
18  Hard work made of writing, with a pig eating the manuscript  (5,7)
HEAVY WEATHER. The title of a P G Wodehouse story featuring the Blandings crew, in which, almost inevitably, the Empress, Lord Emsworth’s prize sow, eats the compromising memoire manuscript just in time. I struggled too long with trying to justify the remaining letters enclosed in (A Pig Called) HEATHER, a different class of work altogether.
21  In alarm about ‘Turning … gyre’, Auden wrote one for Yeats (9)
PANEGYRIC   An anagram of GYRE in PANIC. In his poem, the Second Coming, Yeats wrote:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falconer cannot hear the falconer,
so the clue is a lot more coherent than it looks on the surface
23  She encountered a snap-dragon-fly in an article on insects  (5)
ALICE, Through the Looking Glass. Article A on LICE insects
24  He killed Lensky using a single shot  (6)
ONEGIN. Indeed he did, but to be helpful, the setter notes that “a single shot” is also ONE GIN. How kind!
25  Margaret Drabble’s summer place, with many bars  (4-4)
BIRD-CAGE. Her novel was A Summer Bird-Cage, the two halves of which are composers.  John Cage you know not least for his many bars of silence in 4’33”. Bird is more problematic. William was spelt with a Y, but you can have Arthur Bird or perhaps Charlie “Bird” Parker.
26  Trials taken on by Hercules, say: stoically  (6)
ESSAYS  No need for classical knowledge, just lift it from HerculES SAY: Stoically
27  Fashion suiting a friend of Little Chandler (8)
IGNATIUS  One of the short stories in James Joyce’s Dubliners, in which “Littler Chandler” finds himself comparing his own life to that of his old friend Ignatius Gallaher ending up deeply aware  that his life is “cabin’d, cribb’d, confined” and far less fun that Gallaher’s. The wordplay is generous enough for those people who eschew depressing stories, an unmissable anagram of SUITING A prompted by the instruction “fashion”

Down

1  Motion responsible for a blow to the head  (6)
ANDREW. The former Poet Laureate puts his hand up for “A Blow to the Head”. Simple as that.
2  Permitted to support an actor who reveals the plot of the Mousetrap (6)
HAMLET  A (bad) actor being a HAM, supported by (this is a down clue) LET for allowed.
3  “The dagger was ‘good for killing fish,’ he said —; … fish upon two legs.” (In the South Seas, R.L. Stevenson)  (9)
ROGUISHLY. Quotes you either know or you don’t. The word is quite easily  (and unambiguously) derived from the checking letters.
4  Plant two owls and a hen here  (3,4,5)
OLD  MAN’S BEARD:
There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, “It is just as I feared!—
Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard.   Edward Lear, unusual in that the last line is quite different from the first, though it still rhymes beard with –um – beard.
6  Only seconds from losing Ezra Pound in Leucothea’s sea air (5)
OZONE Again the words are unimportant except for the second letters in the five words before sea air. So it’s delightful to discover Leucothea turns up in several of Pound’s Cantos, a mark of the diligence of our setter
7  Member states made no changes to an ancient port (8)
EUDAEMON 1st Century BC port roughly where Aden is now. Member states EU, the rest an anagram (changes) of MADE NO
8  Those magnificent and angry men make this?  (8)
NINETEEN. What a quirky clue! Those Magnificent (men) are not the flying machine ones but the 7 (Yul Brynner, et al), and the Angry Men comprise12 (Henry Fonda et al) together make our answer. Loved it.
11  One affords tight control of stock by doing reordering  (4,8)
BODY STOCKING An anagram (reordering) of STOCK BY DOING
15  At first Atticus follows a system of laws; and then runs into his sister!  (9)
ALEXANDRA Hancock, sister of Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mocking Bird. Complex wordplay, I think A(tticus) follows A LEX (system of laws) AND then R(uns)
16  Ion maybe overheard what Drake does to a Nightingale?  (8)
RHAPSODE A performer of epic poetry and eponymous star of Plato’s Io. I can offer Aubrey Drake Graham, aka Drake. What he does sounds like RHAPS, and “to a Nightingale suggests ODE. Needs that question mark at the end, I think.
17  He wrote The Red Bow as Red Sun originally  (8)
SAUNDERS.  Looks like an anagram, is, of AS RED SUN. George Saunders wrote the short story.
19  This festival has one rule I’d counter  (6)
DIWALI The Hindu festival of lights. 1 LAW (rule) ID “counter”, ie inverted.
20  Every other one deserted a teen because he married Creusa (6)
AENEAS. Alternate letters in A tEeN bEcAuSe
22  Starting for Eldorado with a light heart (5)
GAILY Looks like this puzzled some solvers: the poem Eldorado by Edgar Allan Poe begins “Gaily bedight, a gallant knight…” That simple.