Revered old novelist heard cheers wandering into exhibition (11)
I believe the answer is:
ostentation
'exhibition' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'revered old novelist heard cheers wandering into' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'old' could be 'o' (abbreviation as in OT - Old Testament) and 'o' is located in the answer.
'cheers' could be 'ta' (both can mean thank you) and 'ta' is found in the answer.
an anagram of 'into' is 'ntio' which is within the remaining letters.
The remaining letters 'sten' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for ostentation that I've seen before include "Pretentious display" , "Showiness" , "show" .)