CRYPTIC CROSSWORD

ACROSS 1. Clerks he disturbs while they interrupt speaker (8) 4. Canterbury Elia (4) 8. Talk rubbish about decay (3) 9. Woodland god held silver to be heathen (5) 10. Get the stones out of mine (3) 11. A TV wavelength the French call la Manche (7) 12. Some hero decided to wear it away (5) 13. Fleeing the middle fruit maybe in a sort of glance (11) 17. Mad Academician gets involved in play (5) 18. Proposition empire’s reassembly (7) 20. It could add up to a drink of rum (3) 21. Six, etc, work out how to drive one out of home (5) 22. To pose for portrait is not to be upstanding (3) 23. It could be as hard as seaside sweetmeat (4) 24. It is intended to put one’s name to it, indeed (8)

DOWN 1. Rumpole, for one, was a classic poet (6) 2. Has a bed, thanks to the surplice (5) 3. It is just like George V in a genuine setting (5) 5. Jug with two handles in lamp 1 Down held (7) 6. Give a beating to the coating cook uses (6) 7. Meeting nut in such a way, the outer covering is found (10) 9. Got through and had writer mistreated (10) 14. Lets CIA set out how it may do a stretch (7) 15. Tried perhaps to hide nothing from newspaper boss (6) 16. Drove very fast, though wearing a restraint (6) 18. Public relations is what’s frozen cost-wise (5) 19. A playwright who produced some glib sentences (5)