Thread 5: 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 item in the Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-the-truth-behind-the-blockbuster-book-video

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Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn

Unless the 18% interest and charge on the house was a safety net to ensure the loan wouldn't just vanish along with the Walkers?

I coined that term to suggest a business structure designed to maximise any legally available reductions in taxation on overall wealth.

I don't think this is the adjacent property, though, as their property is at Lagruère - there's a newspaper article about it. I don't think we should be pulling in other family members really.

And this is surprising. "Iolanthe" features a husband grieving for his dead wife. It also takes a lot of potshots at the supposed perfection of the legal system: "the law is the true embodiment of everything that's excellent, it has no kind of fault nor flaw..." There's even dialogue about what is admissible as evidence in a court of law. Lots of jumping off points there for Winn to identify with the events on-stage, or so you'd expect. If she had seen the performance, that is.

Mind you, it does turn out the wife is actually alive, having faked her death. Food for thought there.

Write a book! Write a book!

Perhaps you could start with the garage flooding moment? All your work floats away. A profound commentary on the UK education system!

You might have to fiddle with the timeline a bit though - would be better if the story of doing up the house is after the flood.

When they make the film, could your children pretend to be 10 years younger than they are for the publicity?

No, wrong person. This Anthony Browne was still alive and in business as recently as 2021 (he's reported as designing a thatched cottage in London)

Edit: Martyn A Walker is the father of James E Walker (naval architect and nephew of Timoth)..

MW married a Woodhead in Dec 1981, East Staffs,
JW born 1986, mums maiden name Woodhead, East Staffs.

So now it looks like the French property has a lot more to do with things if they had a falling out, given what the nephew wrote on LI.

I can lend you money that you will forget to pay me back and get gangsters to rough up your husband and provoke an existential crisis. You will need a pseudonym though - like Dutty Waters !

I’ve not reread TSP in light of Moth’s illness, but, if it had a legal read (and I would that assume it did — I don’t know if Michael Joseph specifically addressed this?), then I imagine the legal team will have been specifically careful to check that it wasn’t claiming to

(1) have discovered a miracle cure for a named terminal disease,

or to

(2) be advocating that sufferers from said disease should walk on hilly terrain for ten hours a day carrying a heavy load, for a couple of months at a time, to be cured.

Presumably the legal read was satisfied that YSP was just noting a marked (and temporary) in improvement in one man.

And in fairness, even if they were saying ‘Do this — it’s a miracle cure!’, if you have a horrible, debilitating condition that means you struggle to get out of bed or put on a backpack, and you fall easily, are you really going to drag yourself out walking up and down hills carrying a rucksack full of rocks, for weeks, to see if it helps you? And in the full knowledge thst in Moth’s case, it seems to last only as long as the exercise regime?

Admittedly, I haven’t read Landlines, where people say there’s a description of brain scans showing improvements.

Well done. I'll delete my posts about it to avoid unnecessary speculation

Yes that’s confusing 🫤

This Anthony Browne does seem to have a lot of failed businesses on Companies House connected to property though. Which is an odd coincidence if not the same person.

Landlines doubles down on the terminal diagnosis & TSP is discussed retrospectively here giving Raynor’s feelings of devastation etc. It all has a much lighter touch in TSP itself IMO.

Yes, my bad. I jumped the gun

I think. The Winter Hill will be taken in a different direction:

On a Hill in Winter, Winn and Moth are visited by The Virgin Mary who performs a miracle and cures Moth... they have a religious epiphany... become born again... and then Winn wakes up in a caravan in France and realises that the whole of The Salt Path (and all three prior volumes) have been nothing but a dream. The End.

Penguin, call me!

It worked for Bobby Ewing in Dallas—along with a bit of faux Rachmaninoff.Why not !

Can see why though. So many similarities, even down to the £120k taken from the business.

Yes the French property is interesting (lots of supportive posts for the couple say it's not!)

You have to wonder if this was a collaborative investment that didn't meet expectations.

Or maybe Moth says to Sally/Raynor: “Whatever that dream was, it wasn’t a happy one, was it? You’ve been a long, long way away…” and Moth is "closet" and no moth balls will fix that .....

Hi all. We've had a few concerns raised about this thread so we're dropping in with a quick note.

We know there's been a lot of interest in the recent scandal surrounding The Salt Path, and totally understand why you are discussing the wider context. But we'd ask everyone to please be careful when it comes to naming or implicating people who aren't in the public eye or have no connection to the story, especially where details are unclear or still emerging.

Thanks all.

If we assume Cole happened upon the Walkers by coincidence and offered them his farmhouse out of the kindness of his heart then I suppose there’s nothing to see there.

I don’t buy the story that this is what happened though so I am interested in how their paths crossed. And why he didn’t capitalise on the TSP connection to market the cider.

Minack made me think of Derek Tangye who wrote a series of books that were extremely popular in the Sixties. Starting with A Gull on the Roof it ran to twenty books documenting the tale of Derek & his wife Jeanie overcoming adversity & getting close to nature growing flowers & potatoes on a small farm on a cliff in Cornwall.
He was an interesting chap who worked for MI5 during WWII & was a friend of John Le Carre who lived nearby. Subsequently it transpired that their life wasn't quite as idyllic as pictured & that he had glamourised both their life & their relationship.
The Minack Chronicles as the series was known were phenomenally popular but are now all but forgotten since the author's death. Coincidentally I see they were published by Michael Joseph.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Tangye

From the DM article, this brother doesn't own the neighbouring property - he's the brother that owns the chateau in Lagruère. Maybe this post should be deleted too?
"And, despite losing their Welsh home, they still owned the doer-upper they'd bought in south-west France, just a few miles from a magnificent chateau belonging to one of Tim Walker's brothers and next door to a pigeon tower owned by his younger sibling."

Subsequently it transpired that their life wasn't quite as idyllic as pictured & that he had glamourised both their life & their relationship.

Where have you read or heard that?

I think it's fine to comment on and discuss the revelations and the implications but I think it is really bad form to go digging into all the relatives like some people are. From the nephews post they have been dragged through enough and I don't know what people are trying to achieve by digging out old dates of birth etc.