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Earl Spencer, the brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, said in a book that the King had told him after her death: ‘We’ll forget her soon enough.’ Buckingham Palace responded: ‘The pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss.’ The Duke of Sussex was reported to be in talks to make a documentary about the Princess, his mother. Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, flew off to New York, where he told President Donald Trump that Britain would defend the Falklands, but agreed to look again at the Chagos agreement, which Mr Trump declared ‘terrible’. In a speech to the UN General Assembly, Mr Burnham attacked Russian disinformation and spoke about a ‘single set of global principles and standards’ on AI. An RAF aircraft will assist with air-to-air refuelling for the Saudi air force in its war against the Houthis. The RAF formed a space squadron to counter enemy action; it would be ground-based. Bonnie Greer, the cultural critic from Chicago who became a naturalised Briton, died aged 77. A memorial to J.R.R. Tolkien is to be erected in Poets’ Corner.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dame Sarah Mullally, withdrew an award for reconciliation that she had presented (on 11 September) to Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, a Pakistani cleric, after it was pointed out that he had praised Osama bin Laden. Police thwarted an alleged Islamist attack on Manchester’s Jews by arresting two men before Yom Kippur. Chan Mathok Atak, 19, from South Sudan, who piloted a dinghy carrying 165 migrants across the Channel, was sentenced to 27 months in prison. About 60 migrants spent 33 hours at sea before being landed at Dover to avoid Gosport, where protestors had gathered. Nicholas Brandram, 44, was found dead at his home; he had been accused of being the Putney Pusher, responsible for pushing a woman into the path of a bus, which narrowly avoided her.

Government borrowing rose to £18.3 billion in August, £3.5 billion more than expected; borrowing since April totalled £8.1 billion more than the Office for Budget Responsibility’s March projection. Ineos, the petrochemical giant founded by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, paused production at its three plants in Hull, blaming Britain’s high gas prices. A second failure of air traffic control in a fortnight led to the cancellation of 200 flights. Chiltern Railways was renationalised after 30 years. The British Museum banned photographing the Bayeux Tapestry because it was holding up the flow of visitors.

Abroad

Ukraine launched its largest drone attack on Moscow, according to Sergei Sobyanin, its mayor, setting fire to the city’s main oil refinery; the Ukrainian-built Pelican ballistic missile was also used in the attack. In the Russian elections the United Russia party won 355 seats in the 450-seat Duma. Kremlin officials have been moving their assets abroad, according to a report by Bloomberg. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine met Mr Trump in New York. Mr Trump signed a Bill to impose sanctions on countries buying Russia’s oil and gas. Ukraine received €3.3 billion as part of a support loan from the European Union.

Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, backed proposals for Canada to become the EU’s first ‘associate member’; she also proposed the formation of a European Security Council, which would include Britain and Ukraine. In New York, an agreement was signed by Greenland, Denmark and the United States, which Mr Trump said would give America ‘permanent security’; Narsarsuaq and Mestersvig were to be new US bases. The Iran-backed Houthi movement in Yemen said it had launched drone and ballistic missile attacks on the Saudi capital, Riyadh. The US government granted visas to Iranian officials to attend the UN General Assembly in New York.

The Christian Democrats did very badly in regional elections in Germany: Alternative für Deutschland topped the poll in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where the CDU failed to poll enough for a parliamentary presence; and in Berlin the greatest share of the vote went to the Marxist party called Die Linke. Police moved hundreds of migrants in Ceuta from the beach to a new tented site with a capacity for 1,700; the local authorities say that 13,000 from July’s incursion remain in the Spanish enclave. In Japan 1,908,645 people had to leave their homes because of a typhoon. CSH