Distressed Beatle replacing son with little Edward (7)
I believe the answer is:
harried
'distressed' is the definition.
Both the definition and answer are adjectives. Maybe there's a link between them I don't understand?
'beatle replacing son with little edward' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'edward' could be 'ed' (short for Edward) and 'ed' is present in the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for harried that I've seen before include "Worried" , "Persistently harassed" , "stressed" .)