'A most shocking day'

Historic arrest on a rainy winter morning

- By Harriet Sherwood

It was shortly after 8am yesterday when a small fleet of unmarked police cars drew up at Wood Farm, in Sandringham, King Charles’s private Norfolk estate.

Plainclothes officers stepped put into the late winter drizzle and readied themselves for a historic act that the royal family may have been dreading for weeks.

Inside the house, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was perhaps sitting down to a birthday breakfast. On 19 February 1960 the late Queen Elizabeth II gave birth to her third – and some say favourite and most indulged – child at Buckingham Palace.

Exactly 66 years later, Andrew – no longer a prince, and ostracised by many members of his family – was about to face the ignominy of being arrested and taken into police custody.

It was, said Maj Gen Alastair Bruce, a historian and royal watcher for Sky News, the “most shocking day for the British crown, to have a former prince of the blood arrested”. The arrest was “about as critical as the institution could face”, he added. Other commentators described the arrest as extraordinary, unprecedented, spectacular and a body blow.

As the news of the royal arrest spread around the world, the police embarked on searches at Mountbatten-Windsor’s former home at Royal Lodge in Windsor and properties in Norfolk.

Without naming the man at the centre of their actions, Thames Valley police said: “We have today arrested a man in his 60s from Norfolk on suspicion of misconduct in public office ... The man remains in police custody at this time.”

Oliver Wright, an assistant chief constable with Thames Valley police, added: “Following a thorough assessment, we have now opened an investigation into this allegation of misconduct in public office.