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I have completed the grid but having trouble with the highlighting. The letters of the original subject don't form a regular line. Is this ok?

I think so (and mind the red herring !).

After such a good puzzle it is a shame to see such ambiguity at the end with the highlighting. The letters of the original subject can be made up in 3 possible permutations, I'm assuming we are to use the one concluding with the cell with 2 letters in it but there are 2 other possibilities starting with the last letter of another clue.

The shortest of the other addressees can also be made up twice, so again we have to make an assumption about which is the right one though I'm assuming we are to use the one which runs in a straight line even though it has to 're-use' a letter used elsewhere.

Most unsatisfying!

Various comments. The Italian-born composer (5) has only one letter clued by the wordplay.

The addresses needing highlighting are in most cases the last word of the address.

I'm not sure that there are 2 options for Deil : one is a small diagonal meeting the main NW/SE diagonal, but presumably the other option referred to is horizontal, in which case doesn't the L come before the I ?

Which gives me a slight problem with the main dish of the puzzle, in terms of positioning the 2 characters of the last cell. Apparently they need to serve left to right, top to bottom and right to left diagonal...so how do you represent that in the submitted entry ?

Meursault I agree.
But I am missing a 4th addressee; I am looking for one starting with M - should I forget that one?

Annie, I'm assuming that you have the one along the second row, which refers to the people on AB. The other one is vertical, starting from the bottom row.

Oh thank you so much, I can now relax!

Positioning the IS my view is that for the down and diagonal answers the I should be higher than the S and for the across answer the I should be to the left of the S. So I am goimg for I top left of the cell and S bottom right. But I doubt it matters?

I believe that you're right notrab, in that the exact positioning of the 'i' and 's' will not be a criterion for judging whether an entry is correct. But the anomaly that you have identified is a niggle to me: it detracts from what was otherwise a great debut - not KevGar's fault, in my view, but the editorial team (whose jobs I don't envy at all, and to whom we owe a debt of gratitude: when they get it right, I take it for granted, when there's a hiccup, I whinge about it).

I'm glad others have spotted ambiguities. When I checked the other site yesterday yesterday nobody made any reference to ambiguities, though one such comment appeared later.

There are actually four possible ways of getting the main subject, and s_pugh is right to identify two ways of getting the shortest one.

Like others, I think it's probably safe to conjecture that the intended solution consists of highlighting all the subjects in straight lines, but I dislike the ambiguity, which could have been avoided by a suitable addition to the preamble. Even so, I am not 100% convinced that my proposed highlighting is correct, First it involves two items sharing the same letter, which is not ideal,; secondly it is impossible to enter the last two letters of the main subject so that both that word and the relevant crossing entry can be read correctly, despite some suggestions below.

I'm astonished that the editors didn't spot the ambiguities and amend the preamble or even the grid. Or perhaps they did spot them and expect us to be mind readers.