A technically solid puzzle, but about as easy (and, in parts, uninspired) as the FT gets. In fact I solved all bar two of the Acrosses straight off the bat, which had the unfortunate effect of the rendering Downs to be almost as readily solvable simply from definitions alone.
Across
1 HUMBUG – hum + bug.
4 OVERCAST – over + cast.
9 POKER – K[ing] in (Edgar Allen) Poe + R.
10 MENDACITY – men + d{eceive} + a city.
11 ABSTAIN – a + b + stain.
12 STILTON – tilt in son. Admittedly I was fortunate to immediately stumble upon this answer via a false route, namely seeing ‘list…’ as likely anagram fodder.
13 ODIN – {R}odin. Strange-ish surface reading; why would our artistic friend be disenfranchised so?
14 OFF BREAK – one of the more genteel deliveries in cricket.
17 TAKE HEED – (a + k{nav}e) in the + Ed.
19 SEEM – see + m.
22 UP TO NOW – up + (No. in tow).
24 VISITOR – It. in visor.
25 GOLDENROD – (old in gen) + rod. With hindsight (and the benefit of some botanical image searching!), the use of ‘staff’ may be a tad clumsy. Seems likely that the -rod suffix in the answer is meant to denote the staff-like appearance of the blossoms.
26 HOARD – o in hard.
27 EVENTIDE – event + ide{a}.
28 TACKLE – (elk + cat)<. A neat idea, but I strongly suspect that I’ve seen it elsewhere in the recent past.
Down
1 HEPTAGON – pathogen*
2 MAKESHIFT – make (as in “What ‘model’ of car do you drive?”, I assume) + shift.
3 UPROAR – up + roar. The only ‘Bellow’ famous enough to underpin the surface capitalisation would be Saul.
5 VENUS OBSERVED – A play by Christopher Fry. Both artist and work being way beyond my pantomime-centric knowledge of the dramatic arts. But an almost full complement of checking letters left no room for initial doubt.
6 REALISE – double def’n.
7 A-LIST – hidden. Didn’t really dig the Germanic-style verb positioning here. Moreover, here’s my idle-brained philosophical question of the day; should a hyphenated word be clued as a ‘hidden’ without its hyphen?
8 TRYING – double def’n. Am at a bit of a loss for words at this one….
10 MAN OF THE WORLD – …and here I will plead discretion as the better part of valour horror.
15 KEEP TRACK – keep + track.
16 AMBRIDGE – (game bird)*. Re: the fictional village (in Borsetshire) from The Archers.
18 KINDEST – kind + set*.
20 BUNGLE – {bar}n in bugle (= an evergreen ‘creeping plant’).
21 ASTHMA – as + th{is} + Ma.
23 TILDE – L in tide.
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