Loved this one! Thank you

Ah that was tough. Scored 1/10. Never heard of a number of these terms, which made it harder - that and spending too much of my time chasing the main red herring which was central to the grid. Cheers though :)

Due to the main herring, I tried to stick with fairly well-known terms. Thought Republican was probably the most obscure. Genuinely interested as to which others you were unfamiliar with... sometimes as a setter what you think is common knowledge turns out not to be. All a learning experience :-)

"Fire" is the only one that doesn't resonate for me after seeing the answers, though several others aren't in my normal vocabulary. I think this was actually easier for an American because the red herring didn't call out to me because we don't have all of those here.

Thanks JonBob... it's a screen you put in front of an open fire to stop sparks/logs falling out.

As in "about as much use as a chocolate fire guard".
Tough but fair. Lots of good gridding around at the moment 😀

Ah. Over here that's a "fireplace screen." I thought maybe it was another word for a firefighter. :-)