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We establish the status of the Weyl double copy relation for radiative solutions of the vacuum Einstein equations. We show that all type N vacuum solutions, which describe the radiation region of isolated gravitational systems with appropriate fall-off for the matter fields, admit a degenerate Maxwell field that squares to give the Weyl tensor. The converse statement also holds, i.e. if there exists a degenerate Maxwell field on a curved background, then the background is type N. This relation defines a scalar that satisfies the wave equation on the background. We show that for non-twisting radiative solutions, the Maxwell field and the scalar also satisfy the Maxwell equation and the wave equation on Minkowski spacetime. Hence, non-twisting solutions have a straightforward double copy interpretation.