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The entry is the capital of Samoa. If you put a usual 'gold' inside, you'd have a difficulty.

Thanks laertes, it’s nice to put the last two letters in and find out I was correct all along but without knowing why. I’ve never heard of that term for London, or that term for handwriting.
As difficult as this puzzle was, I feel a bit deflated having finished. No grid staring, no shapes to find, no highlighting. Still a good workout though.

Thanks malone. I had not heard of either the capital or the word for difficulty! I do not submit entries but it is nice to be able to fill in the one missing letter.

Finished, all very enjoyable and a nice PDM re the jumbled words. I just can't see the wordplay for 20d. I can see the definition and the extra word but......

Hi simond9x,
cond(one) in sei; [extraneous].

Thanks ginge

I found the endgame very frustrating. Managed the grid fill fairly quickly but could not identify the quotation despite having all the words except the title and the author. Googled it every way I could think of.
After 2 days of intermittent tinkering I recognised the end of a longer word in 17, then 18 and it dawned I needed to add letters to resolve ambiguities.
So I completed the puzzle but was still none the wiser about the work.
I now know the source from an earlier post in this forum but the only way I can get it from Google is to put the whole quotation including the title in the search engine with quotation marks around.
Borderline unfair for those of us who are not familiar with this author.

Smithsax, I put only the first four words of the quotation, inside quotation marks, into Google and got the source immediately.

Ah - I should have tried fragments. I did not think the title would come between the 4th and 5th words.

Thanks, Smithsax. I mentioned my 'method' only because you'd got nowhere initially with Google and went on to say that the whole quotation, including the title, was needed. I'm glad you finished the puzzle.