Prize crossword

Across

6 The first aviator to cross the English Channel ( 7) 8/10 across/37 down Gloucestershire market town, site in spring 1646 of a decisive battle of the Civil War (4-2-3-4)

12 William the Conqueror’s grave is located in this city in Normandy (4)

13 Modern name of the old Roman port Dubris (5) 15 See 39 across. 16 16th- and 17th-century religious reformists who aimed to remove the vestiges of Roman Catholicism remaining after the Elizabethan settlement (8)

18 An 18th-century British statesman who supported the French Revolution, American independence and the abolition of slavery ( 7,3) 19 See 31 down. 20 Biblical land of southern Arabia, famously associated with a queen and her flamboyant visit to Jerusalem (5)

23 Sport that has its origins in the game of jeudepaume of 12th- and 13th-century France (6)

24 English peasant poet who, after a brief period of fame, fell out of fashion and was committed to an asylum until his death in 1864 (5)

25 A large peninsular region that was mainly under Ottoman control until a revolt, assisted by the British and French governments, during the First World War (6)

27 In feudal times, a vassal’s duty to his lord (6)

29 Name of several Egyptian kings of the 15th and 14th centuries BC (9)

32 Traditional tin-mining areas of Cornwall and Devon (10)

34 The last to die of the ‘big three’ 18th-century English furniture-makers (8) 35 Fictional island, portrayed in two of Plato’s dialogues as an antagonistic power defeated by the Athenians (8)

36 US vice president who resigned under duress in 1973 (5)

38 A stock character of the comparatively modern form of a musical comedy tradition (4)

39/15 For example, Hardknott or Segedunum (5,8)

40 The stepson of Claudius, who succeeded him as emperor (4)

41 The value of this coin was one-tenth of a pound sterling (6)

Down

1 Member of the religious order originating with the ‘Friars Minor’, established in the early 13th century (10)

2 A form of blue dye associated with the ancient British Picts (4)

3 The killing of many Danes in England, ordered by Æthelred the Unready in 1002 (2,6,3,8)

4 Thick meat extract, first produced to feed Napoleon III’s troops, known originally as Johnston’s Fluid Beef (6)

5 Area of western Asia where the world’s first civilisations arose (11)

7 An old unit of measurement, generally taken to be three miles in Englishspeaking countries (6)

9 King who regained Mercia from Egbert in 830 (6)

11 The Roman name for this Adriatic port was Tergeste ( 7)

14 Navigator Amerigo, who made voyages to the New World in the late 15th and early 16th centuries (8)

17 International pressure group working on behalf of ‘prisoners of conscience’, founded by a British lawyer in 1961 ( 7)

20 Jamaican nurse considered by some to have been as distinguished as her contemporary, Florence Nightingale ( 7)

21 Name applied to the sustained aerial bombardment of Iraq in early 1991 (6,5)

22 Poet Laureate perhaps best known for his commemoration of a tragic battle of 1854 (8)

26 Russian emperor who helped form the coalition responsible for Napoleon’s downfall (9,1)

28 Established in the First World War, the Women’s __ __ took on the work of conscripted male farm workers (4,4)

30 Commanding officer of the ‘Dambusters’ raid during the Second World War (6) 31/19 across Major turning point in English history, stemming from events that unfolded a decade earlier during the reign of Edward the Confessor (6,8)

33 Member of Rome’s Second Triumvirate who controlled the eastern provinces (6)

37 See 8 across.