@JanMurphy Hi Jan, thanks. I have done a little more digging and thinking, and I should be able to at least partially self-answer shortly.

@AndyW That's great, Andy! It took me a while to get used to the SE philosophy of self-answering questions, but I take advantage of that now so I can write out the problems where I am stuck. It makes it easy to come back to them later.

New Lost Cousins newsletter lostcousins.com/newsletters2/latemay16news.htm

Peter says "from 9am (London time) on Monday 23rd May, until 11.59pm on Monday 30th May you can access any records that appear in hints completely free."

findmypast.co.uk/build-your-tree

"Access to free birth, marriage, death, and census records lasts from 9am (BST) Monday 23rd May until 11:59pm (BST) on the Monday 30th May. To access records during this period, you will need to be registered and signed in to the site."

A quick q that may not deserve a full question - is it possible to add someone to a FindMyPast tree who isn't directly connected to anyone already in it? I have a set of siblings/cousins that I can't link together as I don't yet know exactly how they're related, and I'd like to see them in the same tree. But I can only see how to add direct relatives.

Never mind, found it - you can do this from "People" view but not any of the other tree views, by the looks of it.