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Thread 12: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

1000 replies

DisappointedReader · 02/08/2025 12:25

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
Thread One ^www.mumsnet.com/talk/amibeingunreasonable/5368194-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?^
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/ami^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?
Thread 4 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/ami^being^unreasonable/5370609-thread-4-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?
Thread 5 Thread 5: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet
Thread 6 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/ami^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?
Thread 7 www.mumsnet.com/talk/ami^being^unreasonable/5373425-thread-7-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?
Thread 8 www.mumsnet.com/talk/ami^being^unreasonable/5375023-thread-8-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?
Thread 9 www.mumsnet.com/talk/ami^being^unreasonable/5376712-thread-9-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?
Thread 10 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/ami^being^unreasonable/5378984-thread-10-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?
Thread 11 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5382212-thread-11-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

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 - 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 eleven 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.
No saltiness. Keep to the path.
Will our life-size cardboard cut-out Simon Armitage keep his head?
NB Timeline coming in the first posts of this thread for reference.

OP posts:
Thread gallery
78
candycane222 · 03/08/2025 19:41

IvyGoldenM · 03/08/2025 13:47

Yes. This is an ‘unflinchingly honest’ true account. The interview with John in today’s print Observer highlights the cruelty and danger of dressing fiction as fact. The publisher has a duty of care to keep the contract of truth with the reader. These books sold so well because they were ‘true’. They offered hope, comfort, inspiration and stand on the pillars of the walk, the diagnosis and the unjust loss of the forever home. Without these, where is the dramatic elements? The emotional investment from the reader? The joy at their triumph over adversity? The redemptive element? This is the magic of these memoirs.
Without ‘truth’ these books are simply fiction. As works of fiction they are not strong enough to compete in a crowded and highly competitive market.
if we can’t depend on an institution like Penguin to ensure non-fiction is exactly that, then what is the point of this genre even existing? In a post truth age, truth matters more than ever.

I absolutely agree with this 100% 👍👍👍👍. As fiction (as it very much looks to me as though it is) it is weak, far-fetched and silly.

Also the sheer brass neck going up on stages, onto podcasts, talking to interviewers etc repeating the same lies

Laska2Meryls · 03/08/2025 19:42

Well... ... I'm being nice 😂

CoolBath · 03/08/2025 19:53

MarmiteWine · 03/08/2025 19:08

Just wondering, and too lazy busy to go back to check... rather than the theory that the 2015 diagnosis has been retrofitted to a 2013 walk, is there any possibility that the walk was actually in 2015/16?

I seem to recall something about the 'detail' of the court case being added in (at the publisher's request?). Could it have been glossed over originally because it wasn't actually an original driving force behind the walk?

It could also account for the "2016 diagnosis" 'misprint' in the blurb of early editions.

Obviously that would mean disregarding some other things we're told happened, including the cricket, though that's already in doubt in a lot of people's minds.

I think that was just our speculation on here, going off the logic that, if she’d really written Lightly Salted Blackberries (which is the worst title I’ve ever heard) as a humble birthday present for Tim, to help jog his fading memory of the walk, and with no idea if it ever being published until her visiting daughter reads it in a sitting and tells her it deserves a wider readership (which I’m dubious about, given her probably previous novel and her childhood of writing stories), there would have been no need for the backstory of why they were homeless.

But it’s the kind of thing her agent would have said. ‘The reader needs to know more about what got you to the start of the SWCP.’

So who knows?

CoolBath · 03/08/2025 20:00

MargaretThursday · 03/08/2025 19:01

I think one thing I'd be interested to know is why she took her Mum's death out of the first one. We know it didn't fit the real timeline, so it was right to be taken out. So that's fine:

If I'm right she initially put it in the first book, took it out and had it in a second. In which case:

Did she realise the date could be checked and remove it, or did the agent or publisher say take it out?

Because if the agent or publisher told her to take it out, then either they knew it was wrong in the timeline, in which case they should have been alerted and be doing more thorough checks.
Or they should have been alerted later when she added it to another book.

I would say that whoever took it out does have a case to answer.

If I were her editor, I’d have suggested she take it out. It distracts from the main narrative of the walk and raises lots of questions for the reader like ‘Why didn’t your mother take you in when you were homeless? Are you estranged? Why?’

And if her mother dies during the walk, that raises questions about how SW gets to her deathbed, how she is even notified (given the dodgy phone) and again, the estrangment stuff.

If her mother dies after the walk (ie, while she’s writing TSP), that pre-empts the questions they ask themselves all the way through — what happens after the walk? Does Moth survive the walk? Etc.

User14March · 03/08/2025 20:06

CoolBath · 03/08/2025 19:53

I think that was just our speculation on here, going off the logic that, if she’d really written Lightly Salted Blackberries (which is the worst title I’ve ever heard) as a humble birthday present for Tim, to help jog his fading memory of the walk, and with no idea if it ever being published until her visiting daughter reads it in a sitting and tells her it deserves a wider readership (which I’m dubious about, given her probably previous novel and her childhood of writing stories), there would have been no need for the backstory of why they were homeless.

But it’s the kind of thing her agent would have said. ‘The reader needs to know more about what got you to the start of the SWCP.’

So who knows?

The fact that TSP was only written for Moth as a memory jog/present doesn’t make sense, for me at least, for a number of reasons.

101Seagulls · 03/08/2025 20:16

Yes, Lightly Salted Blackberries is a weak, highly unimaginative title. She was lucky her targeted agent did not just sigh when she read the title and move on without reading any synopsis. Of course perhaps many agents did bypass it.

CoolBath · 03/08/2025 20:17

User14March · 03/08/2025 20:06

The fact that TSP was only written for Moth as a memory jog/present doesn’t make sense, for me at least, for a number of reasons.

Well, I don’t think so either, but it wouldn’t fit the brand if TWS had detailed her setting out to write a bestseller, sending it out to dozens of agents, dealing with rejections and persisting. It wouldn’t fit sound far too steely and ambitious. So ‘humble little old me just threw it together as an aide-memoire for my suffering husband’ sits much better with the unworldly, child of nature thing.

User14March · 03/08/2025 20:22

CoolBath · 03/08/2025 20:17

Well, I don’t think so either, but it wouldn’t fit the brand if TWS had detailed her setting out to write a bestseller, sending it out to dozens of agents, dealing with rejections and persisting. It wouldn’t fit sound far too steely and ambitious. So ‘humble little old me just threw it together as an aide-memoire for my suffering husband’ sits much better with the unworldly, child of nature thing.

Yes, absolutely. I think she/he are very canny & clever. I also think she’s quite planned & comes across pretty well in interviews especially for an introvert unused to them.

Uricon2 · 03/08/2025 20:34

unworldly, child of nature thing.

I definitely agree that there is a big element of this in her self presentation. It does not match and sits ill with the reality of a woman forging Martin Hemmings signature on cheque after cheque after cheque, over a period of years. All moral considerations aside, it must take nerves of steel to do such.

Laska2Meryls · 03/08/2025 20:42

' Lightly Salted Blackberries ' is indeed dreadful, and definitely looks like an author with an idea that needed polishing.. ( mich more ''Izzy' than ' Raynor' I think )
'The Salt Path' , would have definitely been suggested by her Editorial team . It's a great title - pithy and evocative - and so much so that until the scandal erupted, had been heavily used by the SWCP promotion team themselves as amarketing/ tourist attraction handle . ( and they were probably kicking themselves for not thinking of it ) .

I'm now wondering if even 'Raynor Winn ' and 'Moth' was an editorial team suggestion as being identifiable promotional names rather than actually being their preferred names for themselves all along ...

'Sally Walker' doesn't quite cut it as much for impact on the bookshelf/ potential awards bench .
..

Laska2Meryls · 03/08/2025 20:55

And ' Lightly Salted Blackberries ' just seems to highlight the dire literary quality of the writing before the editorial team got at it .. , I think the hype probably overwhelmed her tbh ( not that I am making any excuse for her in any way.. I still stand by my opinion of them both being narcissistic, disdainful of others , and entitled)

SereneLilac · 03/08/2025 20:56

Laska2Meryls · 03/08/2025 20:42

' Lightly Salted Blackberries ' is indeed dreadful, and definitely looks like an author with an idea that needed polishing.. ( mich more ''Izzy' than ' Raynor' I think )
'The Salt Path' , would have definitely been suggested by her Editorial team . It's a great title - pithy and evocative - and so much so that until the scandal erupted, had been heavily used by the SWCP promotion team themselves as amarketing/ tourist attraction handle . ( and they were probably kicking themselves for not thinking of it ) .

I'm now wondering if even 'Raynor Winn ' and 'Moth' was an editorial team suggestion as being identifiable promotional names rather than actually being their preferred names for themselves all along ...

'Sally Walker' doesn't quite cut it as much for impact on the bookshelf/ potential awards bench .
..

There's an American author called Sally Walker who writes nature books for kids, so the name change might have been simply to avoid any confusion. Raynor Winn is more unusual, so more memorable? Although I do think she was also covering her tracks.

fruit66 · 03/08/2025 21:00

Laska2Meryls · 03/08/2025 20:42

' Lightly Salted Blackberries ' is indeed dreadful, and definitely looks like an author with an idea that needed polishing.. ( mich more ''Izzy' than ' Raynor' I think )
'The Salt Path' , would have definitely been suggested by her Editorial team . It's a great title - pithy and evocative - and so much so that until the scandal erupted, had been heavily used by the SWCP promotion team themselves as amarketing/ tourist attraction handle . ( and they were probably kicking themselves for not thinking of it ) .

I'm now wondering if even 'Raynor Winn ' and 'Moth' was an editorial team suggestion as being identifiable promotional names rather than actually being their preferred names for themselves all along ...

'Sally Walker' doesn't quite cut it as much for impact on the bookshelf/ potential awards bench .
..

The title wasn’t exactly original though so I don’t think that the editorial team came up with it. I mentioned a few threads back that there was a production doing the rounds in Cornwall between 2014 and 2018 called Salt Road - original prose, music and songs from an established Cornish writer and band of musicians - not the same story as TSP but a similar format to Saltlines and described as ‘An evening of original stories and music about the sea and how it shapes us, those who leave, stay behind and come back. A Cornish Odyssey around our coasts and Salt Roads.’
RW was apparently seen in the audience at one of the performances in Cornwall
https://www.liskerrett.co.uk/September%202016%20Newsletter.pdf

101Seagulls · 03/08/2025 21:01

I usually make a point of running a mile from Sunday Times bestsellers as I find them always overhyped , poorly written mass market rubbish. I only read TSP because my sister loaned it to me but it has only served to reinforce my view.

User14March · 03/08/2025 21:02

Something small that puzzles me…

On the One Show interview with JI, Ray says she needs to take us back to the start…

JI jumps in with ‘You can’t say it, but I will, you got conned out of everything’ at about 0:50. You’d expect her to be grateful (?) but she gives him an angry look for a moment. Why? He takes her off script? She’s always very composed otherwise.

Fandango52 · 03/08/2025 21:04

My prediction is that the Observer will publish a couple more articles on this, and unless they find anything extremely damning, this will all die down.

In the meantime, I suspect Penguin will continue printing TSP, TWS and LL, because there is still a market for these (albeit a reducing one). I don’t think they’ll publish OWH though, as the opportunity to promote it is non-existent and I don’t think it will sell well in light of the Observer articles.

I feel like this is the most plausible scenario, but I am disappointed that RW won’t face any direct consequences such as financial penalties. In an ideal world, I’d want her and Moth to pay back some of their earnings from the books and film in recognition of the lies they told in the books about the timeline of everything happening, the background of how they lost their house and the truth of his health condition.

Fandango52 · 03/08/2025 21:06

101Seagulls · 03/08/2025 21:01

I usually make a point of running a mile from Sunday Times bestsellers as I find them always overhyped , poorly written mass market rubbish. I only read TSP because my sister loaned it to me but it has only served to reinforce my view.

Slight diversion, but if you like memoirs and are willing to take just one more punt on a ST bestseller, may I recommend Patriot by Alexei Navalny? It’s funny, brave, impressive and the key bits are all true and verifiable.

RainyTuesdaysAndSunnyWednesdays · 03/08/2025 21:08

@hyenana hypothesising now, but maybe editor said to make it ambiguous about her father being the tenant farmer in TWS forgetting there had already been a reference to it?

Choux · 03/08/2025 21:14

Fandango52 · 03/08/2025 21:06

Slight diversion, but if you like memoirs and are willing to take just one more punt on a ST bestseller, may I recommend Patriot by Alexei Navalny? It’s funny, brave, impressive and the key bits are all true and verifiable.

I watched ‘Navalny’ but didn’t realise he has written a book. He was so brave. Thanks for the recommendation - I will definitely read that (even though it is published by Penguin)

Fandango52 · 03/08/2025 21:20

Choux · 03/08/2025 21:14

I watched ‘Navalny’ but didn’t realise he has written a book. He was so brave. Thanks for the recommendation - I will definitely read that (even though it is published by Penguin)

Agree the documentary was brilliant! I really recommend the book too. I hadn’t realised it was published by Penguin though 😬 hope that doesn’t put you off!

The rest of his family are also very impressive. I follow his widow and children on Instagram, and they all come across as very accomplished and disciplined, with nerves of absolute steel.

crossedlines · 03/08/2025 21:20

User14March · 03/08/2025 21:02

Something small that puzzles me…

On the One Show interview with JI, Ray says she needs to take us back to the start…

JI jumps in with ‘You can’t say it, but I will, you got conned out of everything’ at about 0:50. You’d expect her to be grateful (?) but she gives him an angry look for a moment. Why? He takes her off script? She’s always very composed otherwise.

Yes, she appears to be very uncomfortable when JI says that. Then with an emphatic ‘Anway…’ she immediately shifts her story back to the script. I suppose however much she’s tried to bury the truth, on some level it must be difficult to hear other people saying that she was conned. Also, by the time of that interview, the Observer must have already been in touch with her (or her lawyer) several times. So she must have known questions were being asked. That would explain why she wanted to gloss over the ‘financial dispute’ and steer the interview onto more comfortable ground

User14March · 03/08/2025 21:31

crossedlines · 03/08/2025 21:20

Yes, she appears to be very uncomfortable when JI says that. Then with an emphatic ‘Anway…’ she immediately shifts her story back to the script. I suppose however much she’s tried to bury the truth, on some level it must be difficult to hear other people saying that she was conned. Also, by the time of that interview, the Observer must have already been in touch with her (or her lawyer) several times. So she must have known questions were being asked. That would explain why she wanted to gloss over the ‘financial dispute’ and steer the interview onto more comfortable ground

You’re right & I think it shows she can be very steely & tough if crossed or feels wronged.

Jason Isaacs must be very upset by all this. I think he’ll possibly be party to much more than we are which may point to even more of a lack of integrity on their part.

TonstantWeader · 03/08/2025 21:37

Fandango52 · 03/08/2025 21:04

My prediction is that the Observer will publish a couple more articles on this, and unless they find anything extremely damning, this will all die down.

In the meantime, I suspect Penguin will continue printing TSP, TWS and LL, because there is still a market for these (albeit a reducing one). I don’t think they’ll publish OWH though, as the opportunity to promote it is non-existent and I don’t think it will sell well in light of the Observer articles.

I feel like this is the most plausible scenario, but I am disappointed that RW won’t face any direct consequences such as financial penalties. In an ideal world, I’d want her and Moth to pay back some of their earnings from the books and film in recognition of the lies they told in the books about the timeline of everything happening, the background of how they lost their house and the truth of his health condition.

Don't forget, though, their reputation has gone. And I think for them that will be the worst of it. Their whole narrative is how special they are and how they live a wild unconventional life which could inspire others. And now they've been exposed as thieving grifters with a shaky grasp on the truth. That won't ever go away, no matter how much money they've made from the books/film up to now. If they had to do a flit from N Wales because of the 'shame' of people knowing what they did in a relatively small community, that's been multiplied to the power of infinity by the investigative articles.

I can't see a way back without a full disclosure & acceptance of fault, and as we've seen already, that's highly unlikely.

Uricon2 · 03/08/2025 21:37

@User14March I feel sorry for Jason Isaacs. It seems like he put his heart and soul into his portrayal and became genuinely very fond of MothTim. To know they were doing the interview rounds together when Raymoth were already aware that Chloe H was investigating must be hard.

He seems a nice chap and none of this reflects badly on him, or Gillian A.

Hyenana · 03/08/2025 21:40

SereneLilac · 03/08/2025 20:56

There's an American author called Sally Walker who writes nature books for kids, so the name change might have been simply to avoid any confusion. Raynor Winn is more unusual, so more memorable? Although I do think she was also covering her tracks.

That's interesting, because it suggests that her editors might have suggested the name change - but she already used Raynor Winn when approaching and writing for the Big Issue in 2017, claiming she didn't have a publisher yet.
I've already wondered if she was already in contact with them because the time between her piece in the BI in July 2017 and the publication of TSP in March 2018 seems rather short - @CoolBath do you have any ideas about this?

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