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Thanks Prospero. Not having 6 down in my definite themed answers didn't help. (I had a question mark against it thinking of George). It all seems so obvious now.

What an absolute joy of a grid. Truly a marvel of construction and homage.

RobT and Grunos
My thought on the prize was that there is no reason why both should not be true ie a prize for the first correct entry plus the usual £100 prize drawn at random from all correct entries by the end of the month. Indeed that approach would make sense to me, because presumably the Guardian doesn't want to discourage entries from those who might think that after X days, their chances of winning a prize have gone. Fingers crossed anyway.

And just to record my thanks to Enigmatist for a very enjoyable puzzle. All in all I have really enjoyed the way the Guardian has marked the 30,000th puzzle. I'm not counting on seeing the 40,000th (mid-April 2058?), but there'll be a centenary in 2029 and perhaps the Guardian can be encouraged to mark puzzle 33,333 (a little after Christmas 2036?).

Whoa. I was late to find this one. What a gem. The puzzle wasn't too difficult. But I doff my cap in the most snivelling, humble way to those who knew it was coming. How did you EVEN DO THAT. I've gone back over the threads on other forums. It seems astonishing work by the solvers, and such wonderful, tache-twiddling deviousness over a long period of time by all involved at The Guardian. Bravo

Mine doesn't.

Managed to fill the grid, but I'm baffled by the final part. Is the theme to do with the external words or to do with some of the answers? I know I'm probably missing something obvious.
thanks
Stephen

You need to identify all the grid entries which have been entered thematically and then look at the clues for those entries in order, starting with 9a and ending with 32d. This should reveal two new names.

I still have a few outstanding queries regarding this..

Firstly, the parsing of 12a - it looks like a subtractive anagram but that's about as far as I get and I've reached the 'going round in circles' stage!

Sercondly, in both cases, the 4th letter of the extra names seems to come from clues that, while fitting the pattern - theme wise, are both entered normally.

Hi Bren, I’m sure I proved the 12a subtraction when I did this. I recall “first” needs to be interpreted as “ist”.

4th letters come from 24a and 15d which are internal to the grid, but the individuals are thematic in the ‘goat’ sense.

Thanks Jono, I've just gone to bed but I'm sure your "ist" will be correct - that's one thing I hadn't tried.

Regarding the 4th letter of the extra 2 names, I was just making the point that the answers to both clues are entered normally, whereas the others aren't, thus making me wonder if I'd misunderstood something. It seemed odd, so I just wanted to check on it.