Across

1 Tall building almost forbidding traveller (7)

5 New dust is swirling? We don’t get covered (7)

9 Value contrition, dismissing soft expression (11)

10 Tree, caught in storm, leaning backwards (3)

11 1A beginning to recruit one into service, after reflection (5)

12 Dud pill? Spot almost all of box (7)

14 Western heroine, a month after disaster, heading east (8,4)

17 Some flight crew in series as shot in flight (3,9)

22 Author who died in 1400 depicting church gold and church rule (7)

23 Foreign character in mouth of river guided back by volunteers (5)

25 Endless regret in Hell? (3)

26 Place in our sums wrongly viewed as expressing degree of uncertainty (4,2,5)

27 Cut back by Court likely to appear heartless? Just so (7)

28 Left recent changes where reading is done (7)

Down

1 Calm or spirited when absorbing poem? (6)

2 Lee, the writer, shows a Biblical city in story (6)

3 A universal helicopter part turning up in New Zealand town (7)

4 1A observed in sermon, kneeling (4)

5 1A involved in punter’s sin (4,6)

6 Finish with mixed tray of special food and drink (7)

7 Seek tall stranger carrying little weight (8)

8 1A operating in season (8)

13 Destination of each 1A by a current at sea (10)

15 1A, male in place getting excited (8)

16 Monsieur brought in to make a meal (5,3)

18 Part of head I placed under old cricket cap initially (7)

19 Finish with mice running across the district (7)

20 Heartless girl going to a new church — look, quickly (6)

21 1A, standard disciple (6)

24 Subdue novice at the wheel in monkish garb (4)

Answers for Christmas crossword No. 1399  will be announced along with the competition prize winner later this month.