Thread 10: 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 ...
2nd Observer https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-whats-in-the-book-and-what-the-observer-has-found
3rd Observer https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-the-truth-behind-the-blockbuster-book-video
4th Observer ‘I felt I was being gaslit’ – the landlord who helped Ray...
Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn
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New posters welcome. It would be helpful to read at least the four Observer items above before posting. There are currently 10 items on The Observer website The real Salt Path | The Observer

To all - No saltiness. Keep to the path. Please be extremely cautious when it comes to naming or implicating people and addresses not in the public eye or with no direct connection to the story, and around the understandable health speculations, especially where details are unclear or still emerging. Please do not engage with visitors who seem to have their own agenda and seek to derail. Avoid @'ing and quoting them as - from experience - this will only encourage them back to the threads. We have done amazingly well together for nine very interesting, very serious and very silly threads so far. I can't be here as much as I'd like so all help with keeping our discussion walking along in a healthy and civil fashion is very welcome.

Keep calm and eat fudge.

Thank you

Perhaps. That’s certainly an argument that the Walkers could make - whether it will work is another question.

I just don’t know why Penguin would take that risk in the first place, though. They’re such a respected publishing company, and their reputation is at stake if they make a wrong call on this sort of thing. Do you think Penguin thought the potential earning power of the book deal would outweigh any reputational risk? Let’s hope at least that they invested the book profits wisely and can use that to help deal with the current fallout!

Who signed a contract in what name, and how does it affect the legality of that if the name signed isn't the legal name? As I said earlier, I'm not a lawyer 😆 and I'm very aware that all this sounds like 'sovereign citizen' / 'freeman on the land' type chicanery.' But if the cap fits..!

I have become increasingly annoyed at the WWs' propensity to look down on those people who are working in any job that isn't rewilding or farming on their own land, while expecting those same people to subsidise pretty much everything for them, and being completely unaware that all the rest of us working saps make it possible for them to be 'free of the nine to five' (as they put it) special people.

I actually suspect that PRH thought this would be a little 'Christmas present' book that appealed to a very small sector of the walking community and they never envisaged it being the kind of hit it became. So I think everyone just shrugged off any discrepancies. I mean, one of my favourite walking books is Mark Wallington's '500 Mile Walkies', which, despite being ostensibly a similar kind of book, is probably full of exaggerations, fabricated meetings, glossed over situations - but because it's not widely read, nobody cares.

And once TSP had become the huge hit it did, PRH had pound signs in their eyes, and besides, it was a bit too late to grill RaySal on just HOW 'unflinchingly truthful' the first book was. PRH couldn't exactly use 'it might have been a bit unbelievable and there might have been 'mistakes made' in the first one, but THIS ONE is DEFINITELY true', as publicity material, could they?

Sellotaping Simon's head back on as we speak. He got damp, but I thought he'd appreciate the sound of raindrops pattering down around his cardboard essence.*

*This might not be 'unflinchingly truthful'.

Late halloo, and thank you to @DisappointedReader for Thread 10! 🎉 I love the multi-stop tour that's shaping up, and aptly fitting as we all have so much time on our hands.

On to some historical thread business, as multi-name PP mentioned, TW disguised as another TW was previously tossed about as a potential explanation of the having-a-botany-degree-prior-to-getting-a-loan-for-the-horticultural-one issue.

This came from in @Bruisername on Thread 6 and "suppositions were made" from there:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5372494-thread-6-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?page=22

Would the charity have asked for proof of Moth’s illness?

Really good points - thanks. That sounds very possible.

I'm not in the publishing industry but I get the sense from SW's IG feed that TSP got quite a strong push from PRH and that there must have been quite a large marketing budget attached to it..

The cover design from AH for starters. TSP was published on 22 March 2018. 2 days later SW appeared on Saturday Live with the Rev Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir discussing her walk and plugging the book., Waterstones and other bookshops appear to have given it a big push . There was AH themed bunting in many branches of Waterstones. By 8 Apr TSP had entered the ST bestseller list, and the rest, as they say, is history.....

Re the Monday evening jolly with the esteemed journalist, excitingly I am also going IRL! #CovertOpsFieldTrip

Was wondering if we should each bring a finger of fudge to hail each other, or whether that might give us away to the RW aficionados who may be there too!! Perhaps we should have a secret wink, like in Murder in the Dark.

It's interesting to me as I have written news stories for various national bodies and charities before but rather more in the reportage than investigative vein.

And for anyone new to knowing of the event it's also available online and both attendance types are free. A freebie you say? Perhaps we'll meet some Winn-ers too!

https://observer.co.uk/our-events/uncovering-the-salt-path

Wow that’s a very solid round of promotion. Clearly, it paid off for Penguin and the Walkers.

Cardboard Simon Armitage

Cardboard Simon Armitage
Went out in the rain,
He hadn’t checked the weather app—
He won’t do that again.

He met a dripping pieman
With pies all warm and round,
But Simon’s soggy paper head
Was tumbling on the ground.

The pieman gasped and pointed,
“Oh sir, your head’s not there!”
Simon shrugged (as best he could),
His neck all damp and bare.

“I’m made of cardboard, don’t you see?
The drizzle was my doom—
I need some tape to fix myself,
And maybe a dry room.”

Vroom** fetched a roll of sellotape
And stuck his head back tight,
Though slightly wonky on one side—
It didn't look quite right.

But cardboard Simon carried on,
All patched with shiny bands,
Reciting sodden sonnets,
Still clutching soggy strands.

** @Vroomfondleswaistcoat

(Poets in residence incl ChatGPT)

But how would you go about ‘fact checking’ TSP in practice, though?

Even if we leave aside the biggies, the reason they became homeless and Moth’s diagnosis and its timeline, are you imagining some subeditor emailing Raynor as follows:

‘Can you provide proof you left Minehead on Day X and arrived in St Ives on Day Y? Provide the name of the hotel you stayed in near Tintagel so we can check you were there. Proof of purchase of the light tent on eBay, please. Please give us contact details for family members who knew you were on the path, and we will want to check your phone records to check your daughter really did call you from Venice, afraid she’d missed a bus. Bank records to check you really were destitute and so we can see the £48 a week coming in and being withdrawn, and the accidental payout for insurance on your former house, plus evidence you repaid everyone who had a booking at your farm stay. We’d like contact details for Dave and Julie, to check your account of the meeting tallies with theirs, likewise Polly so we can see if you stayed with her as you said. Likewise Moth’s brother so we can check about the mail forwarding and Christmas. And Anna, to see if your account of being offered the Polruan flat checks out. And Jan to see whether you really left your drugs in your van on her drive. And your son to check he did take a sheep’s horn to university and lent you £20 for a train fare. And Moth’s ‘master plasterer’ qualifications. And evidence you both attended the same sixth form college. And which pub was the table quiz in because one of the questions gets a date wrong? Etc etc.’

I’m going on for comic effect here, but I’m making a serious point. No one has time to do this, any more than Amy Liptrot’s editor will have checked the flight and hospital records on Orkney to see whether her story of her mother being pushed out in a wheelchair on the tiny runway to show her mentally ill husband, also restrained in a wheelchair, their newborn baby before he is flown off to the mainland to a psychiatric ward, checks out.

There was an article - I think in the Observer a week after - by a publisher who basically said very little fact checking happens in any books.

It's not like newspapers where people are paid to check through the facts. The editors are looking for different things like language rather than facts.

Yes, there’s minor discrepancies (did you leave Minehead on a Saturday or was it a Sunday?) and then there’s huge issues - such as was Moth actually given a likely prognosis of a few months to live, and was losing your home a result of defaulting on a loan which you’d take out to pay back embezzled money!!

Exactly this.

I understand what you’re both saying - @FightingTemeraire and @gattocattivo.

But presumably PRH are deep in damage control mode thanks to the Observer’s articles, and no doubt they can’t afford - and don’t want - to be in that position again. How do they avoid that? Do they just stop publishing memoirs or non-fiction full stop?

On one hand, they want fascinating and original memoirs that sell well. On the other, they want to avoid the scrutiny and risk that comes with a factually incorrect memoir. How do they negotiate that and remain financially viable and trustworthy?

I’m particularly interested in this aspect, as this is the first time I’ve come across this sort of thing ‘in real time’. I’m guessing this is rare, but as someone totally removed from the publishing industry, I’m very curious about how this sort of thing is dealt with and how publishing houses can protect themselves from it in future - or if that’s even possible.

Could AI assist?

But it’s perfectly possible PRH were shown the medical letters RW attached to her rebuttal statement which constituted for them sufficient evidence of a diagnosis (if anyone questioned the dates, easy to say ‘Sorry, we lost a lot of documents when we put stuff into storage — will send it on if/when we find it’) and an eviction notice (which proves they were evicted, but doesn’t give the backstory of the Hemmings theft and the loan taken out to repay it).

I mean, I don’t know precisely what would have constituted publishing ‘due diligence’, but this wasn’t a court of law situation with sceptical opposition barristers testing the evidence, just a publisher looking for some evidence of key facts behind a nature/redemption memoir, and being satisfied. And worth pointing out that the film production company would have done their own, and TSP ‘passed’ theirs too, or the film would never have been made.

Re your point about Amy Liptrot, @FightingTemeraire, I’m wondering now if her publisher is doing some checks, just to be on the safe side (or if they’ve done them already)?

I know the situation with the Walkers is still developing, and I’m also not at all suggesting AL - or any other memoir authors - will find themselves in the same situation as the Walkers. I can completely understand though why publishers might now seriously reconsider their approach to taking on non-fiction authors.

What do you mean? Could AI assist with fact checking? Maybe - I don’t know.

I think it's the biggies most people are astounded at not having been checked.

But from this thread and articles since the story broke I've learnt publishers don't do much factchecking.

The PRH line is that SW signed a contract saying it was all true so it's on her. I would think they would have a good case to take her to court over it. Who knows what's currently going on in the background!

Yes, it’s a shame if it impacts on other potentially good non fiction being published. Another impact of the Walker Winns …

I wonder if publishers have fact-checkers as standard now, like they’ve employed sensitivity readers?

I acknowledge the practical impossibility of this kind of checking, absolutely. Though you'd still hope there's a level of general knowledge being applied. I would hope the year of the Berlin Wall coming down would be known to, and corrected by, someone in publishing. I am guessing they are not that conversant with benefits to know what the WWs should or should not be able to claim. But many ordinary readers said the story of losing the house sounded odd and unlikely. Did that not occur to anyone at Penguin, or did they just think it wouldn't matter and no one would investigate it any further?

You could prompt AI to look up everything online on Sally Walker, Tim Walker, Raynor Winn, Moth Winn and Moth Walker, if as a publisher you knew Raynor Winn was an alias, but going back to 2018 there wouldn't have been much that didn't align to their story.

It's unlikely the Gangani site would have surfaced from an AI search as they had fake names.

The medical letters would not have come up, and not sure if the court documentation would either.

You could run the manuscript against other writing about walking the SWCP plus websites with info eg about ferry timetables and identify discrepancies that way.

Maybe publishers will look into something like that post Walker-gate! Have we made a MN factchecking tool concept?? The Unfudger ©

People are still being completely misled by TSP.

I was on the train from London Waterloo this week and a woman was telling the person she was travelling with all about how beautiful and moving the film was, and how she now wants to read the book.

She told him about them losing their home and that they had found a way to cure a terrible brain disease called CBD. She actually said the letters CBD and that it was a cure. That the cure was walking along the coastal path.

Something definitely needs to change in publishing. It has been presented as a true story when it is not. Checks must be far, far more robust including checks of claims of illness and treatment.

I think the Berlin Wall point is a tiny discrepancy in the grand scheme of things, isn’t it? It could just be that the quizmaster got the date wrong in the actual question (maybe).