{"id":308308,"date":"2026-02-20T16:41:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T16:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/308308\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T16:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T16:41:08","slug":"how-a-photographer-captured-former-prince-andrew-leaving-custody-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/308308\/","title":{"rendered":"How a photographer captured former prince Andrew leaving custody \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Slumped in the back seat of his Range Rover, a visibly shaken man stares ahead of him as the car leaves Aylsham police station in Norfolk, England.<\/p>\n

The photograph, taken by Reuters photographer Phil Noble, went viral when \u200cit was published late on Thursday. It shows Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor<\/a>, the former British prince, after he was released from police custody following a day of questioning over \u200ballegations he sent confidential government documents to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When news that Mountbatten-Windsor had been arrested broke early on Thursday, Manchester-based Noble began the six-hour drive south to Norfolk.<\/p>\n

Journalists knew the former prince had been arrested in Norfolk \u2013 the county that is home to the royal Sandringham estate where he resides. Since \u200bofficers from Thames Valley Police \u2013 covering southeast England \u2013 were questioning him, there were potentially 20 or more police stations where he could have been held.<\/p>\n

Following a tip, Noble \u2060headed to the police station in the historic market town of Aylsham.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor released after almost 12 hours of questioningOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Not much was going on, Noble said. There \u200cwere \u200ca \u200bcouple of other members of the media there, including Reuters video journalist Marissa Davison.<\/p>\n

Six or seven hours went by. Darkness fell. Still, nothing was happening. It seemed like this was the wrong station \u2013 after all, \u2060it was well over an hour\u2019s drive from \u200bMountbatten-Windsor\u2019s home.<\/p>\n

The team of two Reuters journalists decided to book rooms \u200bat a hotel. Noble packed up and started heading down the road towards it.<\/p>\n

Minutes later, he got a call from Davison. Mountbatten-Windsor\u2019s cars had \u200carrived.<\/p>\n

Noble raced back, just in time to see \u200bthe two vehicles leaving, at high speed. The front car contained two police officers, so Noble aimed his camera and flash \u2060at the car behind.<\/p>\n

He took six frames in \u2060all \u2013 two showed police, two \u200bwere blank, one was out of focus. But one captured the unprecedented nature of the moment: for the first time in modern history, a senior royal was being treated as a common criminal.<\/p>\n

The image was used extensively by media worldwide.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can plan and use your experience and know roughly what you need to do, but still everything needs to align,\u201d said Noble. \u201cWhen you\u2019re doing car shots it\u2019s more luck than judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n

He hadn\u2019t looked closely at the former prince\u2019s expression, the photographer added. He was just relieved it was him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a proper old school news day, a guy being \u200carrested, who can we call, tracking \u2060him down,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mountbatten-Windsor, the second son of the late queen Elizabeth, has always denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein, and has previously said he regrets their friendship. The current police investigation, which is not related \u200cto any allegation of sexual impropriety, involves the suspicion of committing misconduct in public office, according to a statement released on Thursday by assistant chief constable Oliver Wright.<\/p>\n

The \u200bformer prince\u2019s office did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday. He has \u200bnot spoken publicly since the release of millions of pages of documents by the US government relating to Epstein, who was convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008. \u2013 Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Slumped in the back seat of his Range Rover, a visibly shaken man stares ahead of him as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,11184,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-308308","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-prince-andrew","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}