1 Essentially idle, fish about for Amorites’ retreat (6)
4 Benjamin’s boy gets to exist in a shell, almost (6)
9 Renaissance poet composed airs too (7)
10 Nothing upsets our lot when meeting the Pope (5)
11 He’s totally excited, meeting a spaceman (5)
12 Meet Rex – isn’t that extraordinary? (7)
13 Batter, harass Curt about one of Paul’s followers (11)
18 Father of one of David’s Thirty champions is wicked – has sailor locked up earlier (7)
20 Boats go up and down in these, but they’re secure (5)
22 Leadership is lost by a more headstrong patriarch (5)
23 Seleucus, one of those in a
hundred taken out of narcotic
abuse (7)
24 Merchant ship’s cargo Syria handles (6)
25 Slave girl’s been returned to Virginia to start with (6)
Cryptic down
1 Josiah’s grandad, a Welshman among temperance types on heroin (6)
2 Job was very dear to him in Brussels – Hill almost retired there (5)
3 Old county courts, in areas, like to be superior (7)
5 Take one’s leave here in Croatia (5)
6 Heard outlawed French liquid’s in a strip to stop perspiration (7)
7 Dispel articulate, sounded inarticulate… (6)
8 …Spitz, after Amerone nips, is swimming! (11)
14 Go over hard, way over, and one will upset other drivers (4,3)
15 Company down south’s foolish report over the Tarsus area… (7)
16 …port Paul used to turn over a traitor to Associated Press (6)
17 Jehallelel’s son is an extremely aimless American, lacking a tangible base (6)
19 He wrote potboilers, perhaps going after some blood (5)
21 Tesco unusually do shelters for animals (5)
Quick across
1 Another name for rook in chess (6)
4 Wife of David, Absalom’s mother (6)
9 Arthur ——-, novelist best known for the children’s classic, Swallows and Amazons (1930) (7)
10 Mountain equating to Mt Hermon in Deuteronomy (5)
11 Muse of poets and musicians (5)
12 Pacific tropical storm (7)
13 Assyrian king who invaded Judaea twice, defeated Babylon and rebuilt Nineveh (11)
18 Lake in an Italian volcano, the entrance to Hell in Roman mythology (7)
20 Persian peoples, the Madai descendants of Japheth (5)
22 Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870-1924) (5)
23 Landlocked middle-European country (7)
24 Pledge (6)
25 Sea nymph; moon of Neptune (6)
Quick down
1 Howard ——, discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamun (1922) (6)
2 Indian Ocean islands and strait (5)
3 Priest of Apollo who warned the Trojans of Greeks bearing gifts when they wanted to accept the Trojan Horse (7)
5 Legendary fabler of the 6th century BC (5)
6 Dessert consisting of tube-shaped shells of fried pastry dough, filled with a sweet, creamy ricotta (7)
7 Native Americans whose name was given to one of the Great Lakes (6)
8 Relating to a Christian movement reinforced in the UK by West Indian immigration in the 1950s (11)
14 ——- of Aquitaine, mother of Richard Coeur de Lion (7)
15 All together as one (2,5)
16 Maria —— (1923-77), Greek opera singer (6)
17 Heavenly dwelling of the Norse gods (6)
19 Piece of music for nine instruments or voices (5)
21 City in Lycaonia where Paul preached (5)
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