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38
Woolftown · 08/07/2025 09:20

The silence from her agent and Penguin is telling. Given her sales, she must be one of their most important clients in terms of income and had proved herself adept at promoting / marketing the books (although that has backfired of late). I wonder if they are now doing some due diligence before publicly backing her.

mylittlekomododragon · 08/07/2025 09:21

@QuantumLevelActionsThank you! A very damning statement!

HolyPond · 08/07/2025 09:21

Aspanielstolemysanity · 08/07/2025 08:47

I think publishers do have to be wary of publishing books that make profoundly false health claims.
Maybe as a minimum books of that nature need to be regulated.

Well, agreed, only I imagine the publisher’s legal team will absolutely have gone through the MS specifically to check whether it contains anything actionable.

It’s a while since I read it, but I seem to remember the doctor telling them there was no test for the illness, so it could only be confirmed at post-mortem, which I suppose is a defence (‘we never actually said Moth had this condition, because no one can diagnose it for sure’). Ditto with the improvement on the walk (‘We never said ‘Walk for 500 odd miles carrying a heavy pack and you’ll be cured’ — this was just one individual experience’).

Bridport · 08/07/2025 09:24

NewTribe · 08/07/2025 09:16

😅 I know exactly what you mean.
I avoided reading this book as it sounded too sentimental.

I'm interested in the jail thing. What do you mean please?

Ddakji · 08/07/2025 09:31

HolyPond · 08/07/2025 09:21

Well, agreed, only I imagine the publisher’s legal team will absolutely have gone through the MS specifically to check whether it contains anything actionable.

It’s a while since I read it, but I seem to remember the doctor telling them there was no test for the illness, so it could only be confirmed at post-mortem, which I suppose is a defence (‘we never actually said Moth had this condition, because no one can diagnose it for sure’). Ditto with the improvement on the walk (‘We never said ‘Walk for 500 odd miles carrying a heavy pack and you’ll be cured’ — this was just one individual experience’).

It’s unlikely to have had a legal read. Publishers usually only fork out for that if there’s a chance of litigation, ie with a celebrity or politician’s memoir/biography or somesuch. Publishers don’t start off on the basis that the author is lying! A shame that it seems that they should.

PrimalScreaming · 08/07/2025 09:31

I've just noticed another distancer!
Newsreader, Sophie Raworth seemed to have become quite friendly with 'Raynor' after reviewing The Salt Path on her other Insta page 'Read By Raworth' (I happen to follow both). There have been pics on her 'normal' Insta of the two of them together more than once. Those pics also now seem to have been deleted... but for the moment at least, the reviews of Salt Path and Landlines are still on her book review page.

I think anyone in the public eye will be distancing / deleting until the full story is known!

placemats · 08/07/2025 09:32

HolyPond · 08/07/2025 08:40

It’s very far from a new thing, though. The fake memoir purporting to be a true story is pretty much as old as commercial literature. Certainly high-profile examples in English from the early 19thc.

Some 20th/21st c examples on a way larger scale of deception, like pretending to have been held as a POW by the Viet Cong, or be the son of a Mafia kingpin, or someone pretending to have met his wife when she passed food through the barbed wire in Buchenwald (though that man was actually a Holocaust survivor — only the story of how he met his wife was fabricated).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fake_memoirs_and_journals

I remember reading Go Ask Alice as a teenager and being incredibly upset about the ending. It had a profound effect on me. I was quite relieved to discover many years later that it was fictional.

But I did believe the young teenager was real.

Bruisername · 08/07/2025 09:33

I think the problem is she’s talked about scans and improvements etc

a dr suggesting it might be CBD and then running with it I can accept but the detailed tests etc and outcomes are the dodgy part imo

ultimately her being a criminal is the worst part to their reputation. Her embellishing the truth is one thing but hiding the fact they basically went on the run!

ClareBlue · 08/07/2025 09:37

savory · 08/07/2025 07:25

It is a sad indictment of British Journalism that the recent pinnacle of investigative journalism is an expose of a paperback beloved by boomer book clubs: The Salt Path. They should have a pop at the Bible next !

It really isn't and it a disingenuous comment to make. You've seen the devasting impact this has had on people who live with the condition day to day and the charity trying to support research and awareness. These investigations have to be done in the context of legal frameworks that can ruin publishers if one mistake is made. It never claimed to be the pinnacle of investigative journalism, that's your words, but it is a professional piece of work that is in the public interest to publish and it has been published in a reasoned and rational manner without high drama or speculative hyperbole.
It's not a sad indictment of anything.

Aspanielstolemysanity · 08/07/2025 09:38

Bridport · 08/07/2025 09:24

I'm interested in the jail thing. What do you mean please?

Goa
Not jail

nomas · 08/07/2025 09:38

Is there any way to find out much the property near Bordeaux would be approximately worth?

nomas · 08/07/2025 09:42

Orangesandlemons77 · 08/07/2025 09:20

Thanks, the quote from Sally made me laugh:

“If you’re going to write about something, and you don’t write about it honestly, you’re not giving the full texture of what you’re writing about.”

AveriltheAvidReader · 08/07/2025 09:45

I think there are some people who are essentially so dishonest that they end up believing their own narrative and can't see anything wrong in it.

Bridport · 08/07/2025 09:47

Aspanielstolemysanity · 08/07/2025 09:38

Goa
Not jail

HA! I need to go to Specsavers.

I get the Goa thing completely.

Merrymouse · 08/07/2025 09:47

Bruisername · 08/07/2025 09:33

I think the problem is she’s talked about scans and improvements etc

a dr suggesting it might be CBD and then running with it I can accept but the detailed tests etc and outcomes are the dodgy part imo

ultimately her being a criminal is the worst part to their reputation. Her embellishing the truth is one thing but hiding the fact they basically went on the run!

Also, I think that there is a point when a doctor, having given a diagnosis in good faith, would start questioning whether it was the correct diagnosis if there was a dramatic and unexpected recovery.

Aspanielstolemysanity · 08/07/2025 09:48

Bridport · 08/07/2025 09:47

HA! I need to go to Specsavers.

I get the Goa thing completely.

Grin
HolyPond · 08/07/2025 09:50

Ddakji · 08/07/2025 09:31

It’s unlikely to have had a legal read. Publishers usually only fork out for that if there’s a chance of litigation, ie with a celebrity or politician’s memoir/biography or somesuch. Publishers don’t start off on the basis that the author is lying! A shame that it seems that they should.

I think it is likely to have had, because of the health angle. Someone I know who wrote a MH (ish) memoir had the legal team of her publisher go through it. She was expecting them to be most concerned about whether any of the real people she talked about were identifiable in a way that was potentially actionable, but it was the health stuff they were most concerned with.

User14March · 08/07/2025 09:50

I thought it was interesting she could immediately spot the apparent ‘clean’ ‘Etonian’ faux ‘professional’ beggar.

ZiggyPlaysGuitarrr · 08/07/2025 09:51

MissPeachyKeen · 08/07/2025 09:14

Well even in the first book, the Salt Path, they don't complete the walk, they manage to find housing for the winter and resume it the following year. The film reflects this.
Incidentally, although the film was good, I didn't feel it did the book justice...which is a strange thing to say now.

I'm inclined to believe that Moth is ill, that he's never had a clearer diagnosis than of CBD but that this dx isn't right, and that following the loss of their home they did walk the SWCP and find it meaningful.

As to the rest...I suppose we'll find out

Agree with all of this

PandoraSocks · 08/07/2025 09:52

Ddakji · 08/07/2025 08:41

That it doesn’t say memoir on the back cover doesn’t mean it’s not a memoir. The publisher can only put one category in the back cover (and they don’t have to put one at all - many don’t - but they won’t put more than one). If it’s, say, both a memoir and travel writing, the publisher may plump for the more generic “non-fiction”.

Oh honestly. Why are you trying to defend this shabby book and it's author?

Even if it was pitched by the author and subsequently marketed by the published as a memoir, that wouldn't excuse Winn.

Memoir does not equal fine to be possibly an embezzler and possibly a shameful liar about a serious neurological condition and possibly other things.

I read a sample last night. The part about losing their house was, as everyone has said, very vague and really suspect. Also the stuff about what the housing officer said to them.

Winn/Walker really does have a reason to hide under the stairs now, though.

Horses7 · 08/07/2025 09:54

savory · 08/07/2025 07:25

It is a sad indictment of British Journalism that the recent pinnacle of investigative journalism is an expose of a paperback beloved by boomer book clubs: The Salt Path. They should have a pop at the Bible next !

Utter tosh!

Horses7 · 08/07/2025 09:57

AveriltheAvidReader · 08/07/2025 09:10

TBH I doubt anything will happen to them other than perhaps having to sort out the land and house in France.

They will still be laughing all the way to the bank.
Their reputations are in tatters but do they care? Most likely not.

Agree….sadly

Ddakji · 08/07/2025 09:58

PandoraSocks · 08/07/2025 09:52

Oh honestly. Why are you trying to defend this shabby book and it's author?

Even if it was pitched by the author and subsequently marketed by the published as a memoir, that wouldn't excuse Winn.

Memoir does not equal fine to be possibly an embezzler and possibly a shameful liar about a serious neurological condition and possibly other things.

I read a sample last night. The part about losing their house was, as everyone has said, very vague and really suspect. Also the stuff about what the housing officer said to them.

Winn/Walker really does have a reason to hide under the stairs now, though.

I’m not defending it. I’m simply pointing out how a specific thing in publishing works. No need to get cross with me.

placemats · 08/07/2025 09:58

Aspanielstolemysanity · 08/07/2025 09:38

Goa
Not jail

Sally very nearly went to jail, she was arrested for embezzlement.

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