What. A. Photo.    

What a stunning, extraordinary, scandal-defining, generation-defining photo.   

A gaunt man. His eyes wide, somehow focusing on nothing and everything at once, as if haunted by a vision he cannot unsee. His face is haggard. His pale fingers clasped. The light of the photographer’s flash reflected in red in his pupil. 

What is the position he’s in? Is he trying to hide? If so, he did a terrrrrible job. Is he willing the plush leather seats of his vehicle to swallow him whole? And what is that expression? Is it the humiliation of Police detention? The shock and embarrassment of being held against your will? Or is it the gravity of this moment, this realisation? Does Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor finally see that he, a man born into the most extreme privilege is now mired in the most profound shame. Charged? As of yet, no. Convicted? Certainly not. But surely irredeemable in his disgrace. 

What a moment. What an extraordinary fall from grace. What a photo. 

Once again, we are reminded, aren’t we, of a photograph’s unique power. There’s nothing like it. The Reuters photographer at the other end of the lens fired off six frames. Two had Police in the shot. Two were blank. One was out of focus. And this, the frame that endured. A photograph that says more than any headline in British tabloids ever could. It was as if it were meant to be. 

In a strange poetic way, photographs now book-end Andrew’s disgrace. It was a photograph that first tied him to Epstein and Virginia Giuffre. The then-Prince stands with his body facing towards her, his hand around her waist. It was a photograph in the latest Epstein dump of Andrew on all fours, above a female on the ground. Once again, the flash reflects red in pupils. And so it was that when he was filmed and photographed on his 66th birthday leaving the Aylsham Police Station, it is the photograph we remember. 

A friend noted yesterday what an astoundingly undignified episode this has been. From the photographs themselves to the pathetic communications of Sarah Fergusson scattered throughout the files, to the image of a flubbering man on the BBC’s Newsnight, waffling about Pizza Express. I bet you’re sweating now, Andy. 

I thought the King’s statement yesterday was excellent. Might he have felt a strange relief at having already stripped his brother of his Royal titles? Perhaps. There are still plenty of valid questions about why the Palace didn’t do a whole lot more, a whole lot sooner. But the statement was strong and uncompromising. He continued with his engagements. And in the face of a reputational crisis for the Palace, he was a vision of relative stability.  

Who can say now what indignities remain for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor? 

He spent his 65th birthday in a palace and his 66th in a police station. Theoretically if he’s charged and convicted, he could face time in prison. 

That photograph of him being driven away cut a pitiful vision. One that very few people will forget. From Andrew’s perspective, worse could yet still be to come.