Thanks for your response. I don’t think I’m using the wrong template though. I can successfully remove the description, and removing the truncate method has the desired effect. However, removing strip_tags does nothing.
I have of course overridden the block as specified in the guide, in themes/Frontend/MyProject/frontend/listing/product-box/box-basic.tpl:
{extends file='parent:frontend/listing/product-box/box-basic.tpl'}
{* Product description override *}
{block name='frontend_listing_box_article_description'}
{$sArticle.description_long}
{/block}
Using the above code, the test-class appears on the description element, inferring that it is overridden successfully. The description is no longer trucated. However, tags are still stripped from the content.