Judas in court, an awful traitor for a start (8)
I believe the answer is:
turncoat
'judas' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'court an awful traitor for a start' is the wordplay.
'awful' is an anagram indicator.
'traitor' becomes 't' (this might be a standard abbreviation which I don't know about).
'for a start' means one lot of letters go next to another (some clues go at the start of others).
'court'+'an'='courtan'
'courtan' is an anagram of 'urncoat'.
'urncoat' put after 't' is 'TURNCOAT'.
'in' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for turncoat that I've seen before include "treacherous as one?" , "Judas" , "Deserter to opposition" , "Traitor with inverted garment" , "Rat" .)