Hi, xij and unclued,
This was a particularly tough puzzle, and the SW corner seems to be a challenge to a lot of solvers, including myself. As regards the clues mentioned:
26a: the definition is “put to last once more”. A “veronica” can refer to a move in bullfighting, so think what a successful matador might say, and put this after the standard three-letter abbreviation for “reserve”.
28a: the definition is “trekker”. The first letter of the answer is the “lead of Tongariro”, the second letter is a crossword classic one-letter abbreviation meaning “take”, and the rest of the clue is given by “time off work” – this relates to a six-letter word that can mean “work” (a more usual definition would be “to interfere unwarrantably or damagingly”) less the standard one-letter abbreviation for “time”.
35a: this is an old form of a word meaning “knockout” – the modern spelling is a four-letter word. In the wordplay, “boxing” is used in the sense of “boxing-in” or “surrounding”.
18d: I’d never come across this hyphenated word before – the definition is “with”, but not in the usual sense. A word for “intimate” surrounds (“embraces”) the beginning to “offend” and a “Muslim prince” (we had this prince last week in Listener 4417, but with a different spelling).
22d: “The Mystic” is the description of one of Holst’s
Planets. The wordplay is a word that can mean “writing” but turned upside down (“about”) and a word meaning “melody”.
23d: Again, this clue uses a word I’d not come across before. The definition is a very well-known word that means “not much” but expressed in an “affected” way, and the wordplay is a four-letter word defined by Chambers as “a form of writing used especially by young people on the Internet, characterized by unconventional spelling and grammar and the use of numbers and symbols to replace many letters” (I guess that “l8r” for “later” would be an example of this), followed by a two-letter French article.