Please help with parsing of 30 down.Clue is: English town succeeded before the French city.2,6 letters.I have S? H?L?N? The answer must be ST HELENS. I can see le= the French, but that's all.Any help is much appreciated.
It is St HELENS because the clue says 'English town' = the anser we are looking for:
'succeeded' before 'the' is where Mr or Mrs Cluesetter wants you to take te 1st letter of 'succeeded' and put it before 'the'; so far we thus have 'ST.HE'. Then the clue continues '...French city'. As the last words in the clue these amount to the last letters in the answer. This is the Fr city of LENS. There is your answer:
ST. HELENS