Thread 4: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

The Observer The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...

Second article in the Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-whats-in-the-book-and-what-the-observer-has-found

Third article in the Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-the-truth-behind-the-blockbuster-book-video

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Thread 2 Thread 2. To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet

Thread 3 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5369425-thread-3-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn

I was at Twyford Down way back when with Earth First and the Dongas Tribe - happy times. Patrick Barkham is an ardent wild swimmer with an excellent book out.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Swimmer-Wild-Life-Roger-Deakin/dp/0241471478

Of course memoirs are someone’s memory so it will never be 100% accurate

they chose to market this in non fiction and claim it was the truth

now whether or not the fudge she stole was 20p or 25p no one cares

but she lied about how they lost their home when it was her criminality that led to their downfall

she lied about the timing of his diagnosis and what his diagnosis actually is - and then said the walk had made him better

that’s more than just a misremembering or slight embellishment

Sorry, datable, not ‘database’!

New story

https://archive.ph/9Rw0E

I have noticed that the TSP book cover has got rather large holes in it!

It's going to be the, "Property In France" angle. That could be a very rich seam to mine. Especially as it's summer.

Agree there could be more to come from The Observer, unless they have stepped off for some reason. Her statement is extraordinary. It's likely there's a further actually true story or two of interest pre-North Wales.

The DM article today is not exactly favourable, reporting that they fell out with their latest benefactor rather than supporting the statement.

She wrote a book sold as non-fiction.

She signed a legal contract with her publishers stating it was true and the flyleaf of her book reads This book is a work of non-fiction based on the life of the author. In some limited cases, the names of people or detail of places or events have been changed to protect the privacy of others. The author has stated to the publishers that, except in such respects, the contents of the book are true.

She was questioned for embezzling £64k from her employer and disappeared.

She stated her husband was given a terminal diagnosis in 2013 and this was one of the reasons for going on their walk. The possibility of this diagnosis (i.e. not confirmed) was mentioned in 2015, 2 years later.

Hang on a mo! It's not a niche issue IF (and I highlight that because the jury is still out to some degree) a best selling (2m+) book and film marketed as being "unflinchingly honest" turns out to have been a highly embellished account of a leisurely walk on the SWCP with a putative diagnosis of mild CBD in 2015 ( after the walk had been completed) after the eviction from their home directly related to the author's embezzlement of £64,000 from a trusting small business owner, the shock from which may have led (according to his sister) to his early demise (aged 65 in 2012) vs the account in TSP, which the author doubles down on in her rebuttal of the 'heinous untruths' in the Observer article.

The Observer and Raynor Winn's account of how the family house was lost ( and she was forced to embark on her epic walk on the SWCP with Moth) are so diametrically opposed that only one truth can exist. Either the Observer journalist has got it completely wrong or Raynor Winn/Sally Walker is a pathological liar. Truth will ( hopefully without the intervention of NDAs) out!

So, what happens next? Multiple sources say that Penguin has been thrown into “crisis mode” and its bosses will be racing to establish the definitive truth about one of their most successful authors. The consensus in the publishing industry seems to be that the book can be salvaged if the only issue in question is the reality of the Winns’ finances and Raynor’s apparent embezzlement. If Moth’s illness is found to have been invented or exaggerated, however, it will likely be dropped.

That really isn't indicative of anything at all. For starters these are the top selling books last week (before the story published) - this weeks haven't been tallied yet. Also it doesn't take much to be a top selling book of the week - especially "non-fiction". Since published in 2018 it has sold 2 million copies world-wide. That means that roughly 0.025% of the people of the world have bought it!

In the same year Michelle Obama's memoir, Becoming, was published and has sold over 17 million copies worldwide. Then again I am fairly positive that most of what she wrote was true.

Interesting read - feels balanced. Thanks for archive link

Yes, it was me — it was Moth and environmental protests that made me think about him (and how I cooked in Oxford in the 90s for some protesters who were camped out on the site of what is now the Said Business School, near where we lived.)

I’d forgotten Swampy’s real name, even, and then I fell down a Tipi Valley rabbit hole.

@SueSuddio, and anyone who’s seen the TSP film. I’ve only seen the trailer, but Gillian A sounded weirdly Thatcher-y in it. Does she, or am I hallucinating?

I only listened to an audio interview with RW today and it struck me that GA didn’t sound at all like her, or as if she’d made much effort to. RW had quite a rapid, slightly gaspy way of speaking, with little in-breaths between utterances, in this clip.

@HolyPond admittedly it is harder to get jobs in Cornwall, but not impossible. I know someone in her 50s in a similar situation who has got a job cleaning holiday lets for example. Of course, RW would not have any references to put down!

I only mean it’s niche in that the majority of the public aren’t going to care either way

the people who will care are her fans or book people

dh read most of the first - I told him there were more and he asked what they were about. When I told him he rolled his eyes ‘found a formula that works I suppose’

There appears to be a “definitive” CBD diagnosis in the timeline albeit one that isn’t backed by the evidence we’ve seen so far at the right time. Of course, new information (or outright fabrications) could still surface, and there’s no legal mechanism to challenge the authenticity of those claims. That uncertainty becomes the Great Unknown—a Damocles’ sword hanging over them and a handy way to dodge accountability for past missteps that, to the wider public, might otherwise be unforgivable and they can style that out we were running away from bad life choices and made deeply regrettbale mistakes which we hope the great reading public can forgive us for.

Apropos to nothing, I have learnt so much from this thread .. Lleyn Sheep, Cider making and now the 'Black Country' .. which I had heard before but didn't know it was an actual area and why it was called that , or even that it had a particular identity and accent.. Really interesting history though about our manufacturing industrial heritage though ... Strange where MN rabbit holes take one ! .

Yes, thanks @sualipa for the link.

There's quite a long critique from nature writer Quintin Lake, 'author of The Perimeter: A Photographic Journey around the Coast of Britain, spent five years walking the coastline and spent a lot of time on the South West Coast Path.'

'Lake says that he found much of The Salt Path implausible, from Winn’s descriptions of locals treating her and her husband badly for being homeless to the ineptitude of their camping setups.

“A couple of times, people mistook me for being homeless because you have a little tent by the coast and you’re by yourself in crappy weather where there’s no tourists. But I found that there wasn’t any prejudice and that people were quite kind and neutral. I found the British, universally, were pretty understanding in that,” Lake says.

“From the practicalities of camping and backpacking it seemed like [the Winns] were so hapless about how they undertook it that I found it hard to understand why you wouldn’t improve. Obviously they were middle-aged people that were suddenly chucked into needing to camp, and that’s not easy for anyone,” he adds.

“But if you’re making it a lifestyle, you tend to learn how to work around it, how to camp in the lee of the bays, how to camp out of sight. My eyebrows would raise when I read it because, yes, it’s tricky for a bit, but then you sort of figure it out… Especially if you’re travelling for months on end. If you don’t, you’re totally screwed.”

Plus some quotes from locals in North Wales who remember Martin Hemmings fondly, including one who 'only discovered that the Walkers had “just disappeared” overnight in the early 2010s through word of mouth.'

But no one is claiming that this should be outranking Gaza, surely. It’s a story about a best-selling UK book that was recently adapted into a film with two high-profile actors, which seems to have gone to a lot of readers’ hearts, including people who don’t read a lot, and which has led to people thinking they know the Walkers and taking a neighbourly interest in Moth’s health, what happened etc.

I mean, it’s not Watergate!

I personally think it’s interesting because it reveals things about how books are written, edited, sold, marketed and read, and how the mess, pain, chance and disappointment of real life is tidied into memoir firm. Some people feel genuinely betrayed, and some people have been wounded by the idea that CBD might not be so intractable.

But I’m not sure that it’s any more significant that people on Tattle feeling betrayed because an influencer ‘misrepresented’ her real life.

Phew, just caught up. Here are the things piquing my interest:

• what was the story behind the Sasha/Avi comment on Facebook??
• I agree the book review by a neurologist and the rock bottom comments don’t seem at all on the level
• so far there’s been nothing to suggest that Martin Hemings was anything but a straight business owner, but has anyone checked? Why were the books a bit of a mess? Might explain why his wife kept very quiet for the best part of a decade. Why now? She might have been under an NDA but that was true last week as well, if she was. I’m not accusing anyone, I would just like to understand
• I agree there is a worrying tinge of husband-worship in some of the anecdotes from the books. I know a woman who comes across similarly and her husband is an abusive pathological liar, provably corrupt. So I’m interested that he comes across as a quiet, gentle soul. Hmmmmmmmm

Martin Hemmings is dead and I think it’s best not to speculate

if the books were a bit of a mess then she wasn’t avery good bookkeeper!!!

NEW STATESMAN The Salt Path is Scientology for the middle classes
Fabrications and fabricators always find their marks.

Funny I was just thinking about gullible souls and Scientology earlier today and then this article pops up - probably a lot of envious writers who are enjoying dancing on their supposed graves. Apparenlty Gillian Anderson considered optioning the film herself.

https://archive.ph/Z99Kl

The bottom line is that nobody would have bought a book or paid to see a film about a conwoman who embezzled tens of thousands of pounds from her employer, and to avoid prosecution borrowed money off a relative to pay her fraudulently gained monies back.

Conwoman and her husband end up homeless but it all evolves from conwoman embezzling money. Con couple then embark on a walk and write about it in flowery language with lots of embellishment here and there.

Can't say I would bother buying the book or paying to see the film. (I actually haven't read the book or seen the film.)

But the rub is neither would the publishers have published the book or the film producers produced the film if they knew the true facts.

This has made me realise something else (albeit only after 24 hours) which is that it is notable that the statement only came out via her own website. Which means that PRH do not feel comfortable backing it. Nor do the film company.

That's an exellent take I sort of want to read the book now or at least skim it - someone should do a parody liked Bored of the Rings.