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All finished, so thanks for the prompts.
Funnily enough I got the theme very quickly by guessing the penultimate row and googling it when I had only completed rows A, B and C. This helped tremendously, as I then knew what I was looking for. I do like the thematic clue at 32, even though I initially got it wrong.

I've just belatedly checked into the thread again - having been out of signal for most of the last week. Yes, indeed, ODALIQUE does go W, NE, NW, NW then E, NE and W. I think I was for a while following the shading I'd done for AMONTILLADO instead of sticking rigidly to the track of ODALIQUE. But this should have been easy to spot...

Not for me this one. Don't like a puzzle where you cold solve 45 out of 53 clues and still have basically no help on the remaining 8. Have a completed grid and the end game now. Don't have an answer for 1 or 21. 1 seems to start with c and end in t as far as I can see, but I can't see any possible paths between the two, other than 'crap at', which is how this puzzle left me feeling about my ability with Listener crosswords.

21 starts with L and ends in t if I've crossed off my dots correctly, can't make head nor tail of the clue. Fair play to anyone who figures out Roquelaure without the help of this thread, no idea how anyone would ever get that.

Not sure about the odd comment about the cleverness of the grid either. Strikes me you could chuck practically any old combination of letters down into this format and then find enough words, given the freedom provided by the hexagonal structure.

Perhaps i'll be less grumpy in the morning

Hi Smelly, 1 is French words but left of the barred cell ending at the T you suggest.
21 is also a pro US sportsman, ending at the R immediately NE of the start. none of the definitions are particularly common though.

Would someone for the love and honour of God please put me out of my misery? I think the Ruskin clue (16) is IMBUE but can't quite justify why, which leaves me just an empty cell at 38: insect-powder pile for dead drone (8) I have a series of possible letters and if imbue is right it wants to end in a B but I'm struggling.

Hi Harry, I agree that the puzzle isn't as clever as it may have appeared to some. As you point out, there is a lot of freedom for the setter to find real words in this format. Quite a number of puzzles similarly appear more difficult to set than I suspect they have been.

Once I'd started entering some answers into the grid, which involved some guesswork, I did quite enjoy being able to retrospectively find the solutions to some clues. Roquelaure was one of those.

And I ended up in the same boat as you, namely, having filled nearly all the grid but being none the wiser to the theme. I dislike 'wordsearch' anyway, a particularly mind-numbing pursuit. But when I spotted the AMONTILLADO filtering down to the SE corner, I though that it was worth googling for novel titles ending with that word. And sure enough...

Thanks for the hints, still no joy. Ciamat, cianot? Can't find anything in chambers starting CIA and ending in t.

It's not imbue. It's a hidden clue. 38 is a word for insect powder that starts with a 4 letter word for 'pile for dead'.

Hi n00b -- the answer to the Ruskin clue is hidden in the clue itself. It is a strange word which roughly means the opposite of wealth or "well th".

As for 38, the definition is the insect-powder. Use a 4 letter word meaning "pile for dead", followed by a 5 letter word meaning drone ( as in noise ) .

Hopefully that is you sorted!

smellyharry, you beat me to it!

As for 1, try going east after the initial letter C, then NW to the I ....

I feel like I must be being monumentally stupid as there's only a handful of paths that work, but I can't see it. If I go east from the c I have cra. Then I have to go up to get to the t, so that's a p. There is no word that I know that is crap?t.

Got it finally. East then north west. I was being stupid.