It’s everywhere; personally, it’s making me yearn to be excluded.

Louis Susman reaches out to Muslims on 9/11

Louis Susman, Barack Obama’s former campaign fund-raiser, whose appointment as Ambassador to the Court of St James’s I revealed in March, has two engagements in his diary next week which will, he hopes, symbolise the “inclusiveness” of the new administration.

On Sept 10, Susman will host a Ramadan Iftar reception at Winfield House, his residence in Regent’s Park, and the next day, on the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, he will attend a concert for the British victims of the terrorist atrocities outside the American embassy in Grosvenor Square. Camilla Hellman, the president of the British Memorial Trust, which is organising the event at the same time as a concert at the British Garden in Hanover Square, New York, says: “There were innocent Muslims, too, who died in the attacks, and it’s appropriate the ambassador should attend the event the night before.”

Iftar refers to the evening meal when Muslims break their fast during Ramadan. Under Islamic tradition, the new day begins at sunset, hence the event at Winfield House will be, for Muslims, 9/11.