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Blank Littlewoods football pools betting slips from 1957, a pair of battered black hobnail boots and an empty Silk Cut cigarette packet were among the everyday objects unearthed, as well as an almost 140-year-old fragment of the West End theatre listings from the Standard newspaper in 1889.

The discoveries were made during the decade-long £370m reservicing of the palace which has included rewiring electrics, upgrading plumbing and heating and overhauling its infrastructure to prevent long-term damage.

Electrical wire covered with Vulcanised Indian Rubber (VIR) cabling, which posed the risk of fire to the building, were also located. The cabling, which becomes brittle with age, was removed as a priority when the project, which is due to be completed next year, began in 2017. About 1.2 miles (2km) of the rubber cabling has been replaced so far.

The small whist drive ticket, priced at 6d, a sixpence, and dated 14 April 1949 – during the reign of the king’s grandfather, George VI – was found embedded in a lump of building rock.

The pass to the staff social club gathering in the palace reads “Royal Household Social Club – Buckingham Palace: A Whist Drive to be held on” followed by the faded, stamped date “14 APR 1949”.

At that time, Queen Elizabeth II was still Princess Elizabeth and had been married to Prince Philip for less than 18 months and their eldest son, Charles, was only five months old.

Pages from the Daily Express newspaper in 1966 detailed the maximum security prison housing the Great Train Robbers, picturing the inside of Durham prison and reporting that “the men who were found guilty of stealing a fortune in mailbags spend their week stitching them for nine shillings”.

Instructions for royal household staff for the 1977 Silver Jubilee Diplomatic Corps reception informed them that the queen and other members of the royal family would move round the ballroom in a “clockwise direction”.

Aides were to encourage the 350 British guests to mingle with the diplomats at the glittering white tie and tiaras annual gathering, according to the manually typed sheet, which also said that smoking was banned in the certain state rooms and the reception kept to a strict timetable.

Other findings included a section of Minton decorative ceramic tiles from a fireplace hearth, with the design dating from around the mid-1800s, an aged Pewter tankard, a bottle of Schweppes still Malvern English spring water, a wooden junction box and a faded box containing six Christmas cards. %!s()

German top seed Zverev lifted a heavy burden by winning his first major title at this year's French Open and has quickly added another with a 6-3 7-6 (7-2) 5-7 6-2 victory over Shelton in New York.

At the start of the season, there were question marks over whether 29-year-old Zverev would ever win one of the sport's most prestigious prizes.

Now he is celebrating becoming a multiple Grand Slam singles champion, having seen the path to glory partially cleared by injuries to Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz.

Sinner and Alcaraz swept the board between them at the majors in 2024 and 2025 - and Zverev has taken full advantage against the rest of the field in their absences.

Big-hitting Shelton, 23, has long been identified as a player who can win the biggest titles, but ultimately came up short in his first Grand Slam final against a rejuvenated Zverev.

Eighth seed Shelton was aiming to become the first American man to win a major singles title since Andy Roddick in 2003, but losing serve in the first game of the match set the tone as Zverev controlled the opening two sets.

The momentum shifted in the third set, however, as Shelton finally started applying serious pressure on Zverev's serve.

Taking his third break opportunity provided encouragement to the 24,000 home fans on Arthur Ashe Stadium, but starting the fourth set with a poor service game allowed Zverev to reassert his authority and extinguish American dreams.

Zverev did not initially know he had secured victory when Shelton hit a return long on championship point, only breaking out into a broad and slightly surprised smile after his team pointed out the score to him.

Going into the 2026 season, few people would have backed Zverev to win two Grand Slam tournaments, with the German having already lost three major finals in a career which looked in danger of not living up to expectation.

But injuries to his biggest rivals - Alcaraz missing the French Open and Wimbledon, with Sinner ruled out of the US Open - opened the door for Zverev.

A below-par Zverev scraped through the opening rounds at Flushing Meadows in a series of early-morning finishes, but he gradually improved over a fortnight where he did not play a top-20 opponent until Shelton.

Zverev had not lost to Shelton in their five previous meetings and immediately capitalised on a nervy start by his opponent.

Shelton double-faulted on break point in the first game of the match, handing over the type of initiative that opponents often struggle to wrestle back from Zverev.

Through the strength of his first serve, and his ability to unpick Shelton's weaker backhand in the baseline exchanges, Zverev rolled through the opening set and clinched it when Shelton hit another double fault on set point.

Zverev continued to patiently draw mistakes from Shelton in the second set, but without being gifted a break when his only opportunity arrived in the fourth game.

He instead showed why he has a strong tie-break record with another nerveless display and, unlike in the 2020 US Open final when he lost from a two-set lead, kept his composure in the pressure moments to secure a commanding victory.

Addressing his team which is led by his father Alexander senior and brother Mischa, Zverev said: "We went 30 years without winning a Grand Slam title and now won two in the span of three months.

"I think God has seen how hard we have worked, how hard we have suffered and how much pain we went through.

"I think 2026 is the outcome of all the years that happened before."

Despite the bitter disappointment of losing Sunday's showpiece, Shelton will take pride from his run to a first major final, as well as further belief he can win a Grand Slam title.

Shelton came into the tournament with confidence after winning the Canadian Open last month, but also with a point to prove after an underwhelming season at the Grand Slams.

A chastening first-round exit at Wimbledon against Finnish qualifier Otto Virtanen was described by Shelton as "one of the toughest losses" of his career, acting as a wake-up call going into the North American hard court swing.

He has bounced back superbly to come close to ending America's 23-year wait for somebody to finally follow in Roddick's footsteps.

Shelton did not have an easy route to the final, needing to overcome a series of big-hitting opponents which included three former top-10 players as well as seven-time major champion Alcaraz.

Shelton had never beaten a top-three opponent until powering past Alcaraz - who was playing in his first tournament for almost five months - in an epic quarter-final which ended at 3:34am.

However, he could not double that tally against world number two Zverev.

Shelton's recent success has been a product of developing his defensive skills and improving his weaker backhand, but not being able to execute his damaging forehand in crucial moments against Zverev proved costly.

It was a reminder of the work the American number one still has to do at the highest level against the very best opponents.

"I'm excited with the progress that I feel that I've made, but this one stings 100%," said Shelton.

"I made too many errors when I had the ball there on my strings." %!s()

County council leader Peter Harris said: "Six trained security guards, two each in Braintree, Chelmsford and Colchester, will provide a visible and reassuring presence on our streets, particularly for women and children.

"Our message is simple: the safety of Essex residents comes first."

David King, a senior Liberal Democrat county councillor, previously said the scheme "risks divisions and community tension".

"It could only work if the security officers integrated with already established arrangements," he said. "They won't know the place, they won't know the people, they won't be connected up."

Chelmsford City Council's Stephen Robinson, who leads the Lib Dem-run authority, said: "I think it's really important that we don't create division and that policing is carried out by the police."

Meanwhile, Conservative county councillor Lee Scott said: "We're not opposing it, but we are in the future looking at it to see if it's succeeding and making people feel safe."

The government does not record criminal offences by immigration status, but according to analysis by the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, external, foreign nationals in England and Wales are convicted at roughly the same rate as British nationals.

The council said the trial was "a direct response to concerns raised amongst local residents - particularly women and girls - over gatherings of male migrants in town centres who were regularly transported in by bus from the former military airfield to spend their free time".

"It intends to deter anti-social behaviour, provide reassurance to residents and businesses, and gather evidence about whether additional support may be required," a spokesperson said.

The local authority said it would be funded by drawing down £150,000 from the "community innovation and improvement fund"., external

There would be no additional cost to taxpayers and no increase in council tax as a result of the scheme, it added.

A Home Office spokesperson said: "Public safety remains our first priority and we expect any criminality to be taken seriously. We work with local police to ensure the safety and security of local communities around the site, the staff who work there and those accommodated.

"The concerns of communities are central to our immigration reforms. We are working to fairly house asylum seekers across the country, close every asylum hotel and move asylum seekers into alternative accommodation including former military sites."

Do you have a story suggestion for Essex? Contact us below. %!s()

McNeill, a former adviser to Gordon Brown and senior executive at Save the Children, declined to give any timetable, repeating the formula that the government would work towards the target “when fiscal circumstances allow”.

But she made a full-throated argument for the benefits of aid – as well as promising to build new “agile partnerships” to work on development challenges.

“I’m a huge believer in aid; I’m a huge believer in the quality of British aid, and when you have more of it, you can have more impact. And I think it’s important that colleagues hear that underscored,” she said.

Repeating the manifesto pledge that Labour made before the 2024 general election to return to 0.7% – instead slashing aid the next year – McNeill insisted that in the Burnham government, “everyone from the prime minister down is a believer in the spirit that animated that manifesto”.

McNeill will be setting out her priorities in a speech to charities and campaigners at the New Economics Foundation thinktank on Monday.

She will announce that the government is making up to £15m available via its humanitarian crisis fund to support preventive action in countries most at risk from El Niño.

“It will just do very practical things like vaccinate livestock and get cash to farmers to provide supplies,” she said. The UN has warned that the climate phenomenon is likely to be the most severe in 1,000 years, exacerbating risks of wildfires and flooding.

The 0.7% aid target was adopted by the Blair government and became a cross-party consensus, until it was set aside by Rishi Sunak in the depths of the Covid pandemic, as the government rapidly stepped up domestic spending.

Charities have warned that Labour’s more recent aid cuts, taking spending to 0.3% of national income, are causing sharp reductions in bilateral UK support to some of the world’s poorest countries. McNeill’s predecessor, Jenny Chapman, took the job after Anneliese Dodds quit over the scale of the cuts.

At the time of Starmer’s decision, some Labour strategists were concerned about what they perceived as the unpopularity of aid spending among voters. But McNeill said Labour should not be afraid to make a straightforward argument for development.

“As we’ve lost our confidence, we started trying to make lots of different arguments for development that go beyond what I believe to be the core one, which is, if you have the capability to save people’s lives and to change people’s lives, you should deploy that capability ambitiously,” she said.

“I think aid is a really good instrument to save children’s lives. And the impacts of British aid, through immunisation, or by feeding children who would otherwise starve, is one that in every conversation with the public I’ve had, whether it’s with a constituent on the doorstep or in my previous job at Save the Children, when you’re saying, ‘Do you think if we can do that, we should do that?’ people say: ‘Yes, we should.’”

Voters’ concerns are more about the value for money and effectiveness of aid spending, she said, promising to “sweat the asset” when it came to getting the best out of the current straitened resources.

She said she saw her role as bringing all the expertise and leverage of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) to bear on what she called the “five securities” – “health security, climate security, food security, human security and economic security”.

“The focus on securities is an attempt to recast my job as being about global cooperation and how we get security through solidarity,” she added.

“That will mean pressing for reform of some of the international bodies that spend UK aid, as well as forming ‘bespoke partnerships’, to work on specific issues.”

A veteran of the Make Poverty History campaign in the mid-2000s, McNeill contrasted this approach with that of the Blair government, which used the UK chairing of the G8 group of industrialised countries in 2005 to secure significant debt relief for developing countries.

“Many of us came of age at a time when there were summits with big announcements, and a cheque from the UK government, and actually the thing that I want to be held to account for is have I done the grind, the diplomatic grind, to get the maximum we can out of our relationships?”

McNeill has been the MP for Midlothian, south of Edinburgh, since 2024, winning the constituency from the Scottish National party.

Her boss, the foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, has signalled that he wants development to be a more prominent focus of the FCDO’s work, including by directly taking up the UK’s seat on the World Bank board.

“The foreign secretary’s been very clear that both development and climate are going to be at the heart of British policy: they’re not an addition, they’re right at the beating heart, which I’m obviously absolutely delighted about,” she said. %!s()

Perennial red-hot favourites, having not lost a World Cup match since 2006, the Americans were below their best for much of the tournament before walking away with the trophy on Sunday.

USA trailed by two points at half-time to an energetic France side, but turned it on when it mattered, outscoring the Europeans 30-12 in the third quarter.

American veteran Breanna Stewart once again led from the front, scoring a game-high 22 points, while Jackie Young hit four crucial threes and finished with 18 points to extend USA’s record to 36 wins in a row at the tournament.

Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark scored just one point in the semifinal, but chipped in with some crucial buckets down the stretch, scoring 12, including two threes.

Playing in their first-ever World Cup final, France were seeking revenge for their one-point loss in the gold medal match at the 2024 Paris Olympics, but lost their composure as the Americans turned on the afterburners in the second half.

France’s Gabby Williams, the player of the match in their semifinal win over Germany, scored an impressive 16 points in the opening half, but added just four more after that.

USA, huge favourites who are used to dominating World Cups and the Olympics, came into Sunday’s game looking vulnerable, having come close to defeats against unheralded Italy and again against Spain in the semifinals.

No team had come within 20 points of France as they cruised into a maiden World Cup final and started strongly, ending the opening quarter with a three-point lead and running out to a 14-point lead midway through the second.

Forced to up the ante, USA fought back with Young hitting two quick-fire threes and Clark grabbing one of her own seconds before half-time, cutting France’s lead to two points.

USA were far more composed after that, with Clark finding her range from the field as the defending champions took the steam out of the match in the fourth as they kept the French at bay.

Earlier on Sunday, Spain soothed the disappointment of their narrow semifinal loss to USA by claiming bronze with an 81-58 win over Germany.