Across:

1. F(L)AB BY. Liver’s heading is L, and times is BY, (as in 15 by 15) which took me a moment to spot.

4. MUSCAT. I feel conviced there are half a dozen other possible answers to this clue, like  Bordeaux. Port wine is called after the port of Porto, which is presumably called that because it’s a port, so it all starts to get a bit circular!

10. S(PACE CAD)ET. Nice answer.

11, 9. B(A NANA T)REE. BEER*. Another appearance of the controversial ’perhaps’ as an anagrind.

12. ICE CREAM. Old chestnut flavoured homonym, as in ‘I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream’. 

13. B(OILED)EGG(ar).  Good wordplay, but surface slightly strained?

 17. DIANETICS. (INDICATES*). An invention of the scientologist founder.

21. DIC(T)ATES. Very clever bit of word-splitting - ‘in dicates’.

24. TOILE TSEAT (TASTE*). Eliot’s reversal another old fave. In the paper version this was down as (10), but should of course be (6,4)

25, 15: RO(AD KI)LL. Evocative definition.

27. JE(KY)LL(y). Not a Doctor of Literature, so much as a doctor in literature!

DOWN:

2. (l)AKELA(nds). I wasn’t one myself, but I gather this is some kind of top scout.

6. C(HAIR)LIFT. Ref actor Montgomery Clift, ‘locks’ being hair.

7. THE MALL. Sort of triple clue here, with a reference to shopping centres chucked in for good measure.

8. RACING TIPSTER. Brilliant anagram which I don’t remember seeing before, but I’d be very surprised if it hasn’t featured elsewhere. Just my crap memory? Anyone else?

16. S(KI P)OLE.

20. S(TAT)UE.

23,3. HORNY BUSTARD. (BORN THURSDAY*). Is there really such a creature? I thought the Great Bustard was bad enough, but this really sounds like a euphemism.

Solving time : About three-quarters of an hour, but meaningless anyway since I got 12A wrong, as I discovered later when trying to justify LIRE. The theme is Evelyn Waugh’s magnificent novel Scoop. There are references to it in 16A, 24A, 30A, 6D and 26D, also perhaps some others I’ve missed.

This was a “solved-before-the-bus-came-along” puzzle for me so much of the wordplay went by in a bit of a blur, although I knew I would get the opportunity to look at it all again when I came to write up the blog. I did however spot a cheeky Nina (which may have been unintentional, although I hope not) - look at the five unchecked letters running across the middle of the grid.