Cryptic crossword

ACROSS 1. Around the West, a busy sort of underpass (6)

4. A cutting pair is cross about the South (8)

9. Picketing rope used for a trial maybe (6)

10. An attack is vain: no altering that (8)

12. The beast that carried the load was a drudge (9)

13. The chosen few let one out on Ecstasy (5)

14. Increase in August meant changing into it (12)

18. New situations that emerge in the darkroom? (12) 21. What’s left by cleric is endlessly confusing (5)

22. Lifeless as a man in tie can be (9)

24. Canvas shoe that may have left its mark on a ship (8) 25. What’s spat out is put in the total (6)

26. What an inheritance may do is show loss of status (8) 27. Was at the keyboard, and quietly caused delay (6)

DOWN 1. One from Shropshire causes pain also (8)

2. Polly may be in the racecourse paddock (8)

3. It’s a blow that may disconcert one (5)

5. Customary vocation Lenin adapted to without one (12) 6. Assert space must be provided for private cabin (9)

7. Where it starts to take Giro up at home (6)

8. How to make a chanteuse resign (6)

11. Monk employed as solicitor: he calls my wife Sister (7-2-3) 15. Worked out how to make six recede (9)

16. For foot-soldiers to try a Finn is wrong (8)

17. Highly regarded, it seemed, when ET was around (8) 19. Capricorn, showing crop it produces (6)

20. A plant such as onion I mull about (6)

23. Drive the little devil to the Spanish (5)