Manually having to remove reading list entries in Safari on the Mac

Is this a quirk of my systems or a new 'bug' that's been added?

Before I could add new entries to the reading list on my iPhone or iPad and they would appear in Safari on my Mac. When I read them on the iPhone or iPad they would disappear off all devices including the Mac. This used to take just one press on the iPhone / iPad or a click on Safari on the Mac.

In Catalina:

Now I can add items on any device fine and they replicate across

When I remove them from the Mac, they go from the iPad and iPhone

But when I remove them from the iPad or iPhone the entries remain in the Mac till I manually remove them from Safari. They do go from the other 'mobile' device fine.

Also Catalina seems to have changed the reading action - previously just clicking the item removed it from the list, now I have to click it then remove it as two actions or cmd-click and remove it.

iPad and iPhone are up to date on their OS

Catalina is up to date on patches

Safari is up to date on patches

All machines have been restarted more than once

All machines have been disconnected and reconnected from iCloud

Up to now I've used the reading list heavily to bookmark articles to follow up or re-read but now I'm finding I look at articles twice or more because of these changes...

If its not just me - is it possible to add a script to Safari on the Mac to act as it used to as I cannot find an obvious setting in Safari or System Preferences?