Thread 12: 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 - 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.

Ah, interesting, thank you, I didn't know that.

Yes, the shade of George/Eric might well be affronted by even being mentioned in any conjunction with them!

Married in 1954. First child born 1957, SW born 1962.

These are the entry requirements:

80 UCAS points from AS and A-Levels (at least 56 points must be at A2-level) or relevant level 3 qualification, ie BTEC National Diploma / BTEC Extended Diploma - MMP Grades required (specific unit grades may be requested).
Access to HE Diplomas in a relevant subject - 45 credits at level 3 (specific unit grades may be requested).
Plus GCSEs at grade C/grade 4 or above in English Language, Science and Mathematics: alternatives at Level 2 may be considered.
Mature applicants with relevant experience but without the stated qualifications will be considered individually and are encouraged to apply.
We accept a variety of qualifications to include equivalent international qualifications.
All applicants are subject to wider entry requirements.
https://www.cornwall.ac.uk/courses/bsc-hons-horticulture-garden-landscape-design-degree/

I'm not from the UK so can't tell if the things at the top of the list were impossible for him to have?
But he was a mature student and I would expect that 10 years as head gardener at a NT should count for quite a lot in this context, so not sure he would necessarily need an Access year.
But there's still the possibility that he left there in disgrace because they found out he had lied in his resume about having a botany degree, or maybe something even worse, so he could not refer to that job.

Can anybody remember the source of the photo below?

I did a Google lens search. It appeared on Penguin's website in May 2021. That seems likely to be the source.
https://www.penguin.co.uk/discover/articles/raynor-winn-interview-salt-path-wild-silence-author

Agree. I said a few threads back that as a carer for someone with significant health needs, buggering off like a "migratory bird" for weeks on end is not an option for most of us, which leads to a couple of scenarios, either that she had to arrange formal care or his symptoms are not that bad.

SW's mother was 29 when she got married and was working on her brother-in-laws farm alongside SWs father. Her first daughter was born 3 years later and SW, 5 years after that that. In TWS SW describes her, "This ninety-year-old, strong independent woman had proudly told the story of how she was the first woman in the village to wear trousers, of how the other villagers had reviled her for it." Then having 2 small daughters, the family moved to live at the farmhouse with her sister who was 13 years her senior and brother-in-law. I do wonder what Victorian values that SW is referring to, other than that they don't like her boyfriend.

Oh, and she wore a (now infamous) powder blue costume to her wedding and her bridesmaid wore a grey two piece costume, in 1954, very un-Victorian! Report from newspaper.

It's also the exact opposite to the reason given in TSP on why they did their 1st walk together - she could not do the sensible thing and go find a job because she had to spend every single minute with her ill husband in what little time they had left together 🙄

Also, I really hope that Angela Harding still owns the rights to the cover art and can sell that picture individually because it is absolutely beautiful 😍

Superb. Many thanks.

You can register to vote anonymously but AFAIK you cannot use a fake name.

I don't think we know for sure, any more than we know her advance for TSP. I'd doubt it, personally. It would be unusual for a debut author.

I'm pretty sure someone said a few threads ago that TSP's cover art is still available to buy on AH's website, but is not longer called The Salt Path.

In fairness, I think SW means she was 'Victorian' in attitude, meaning old-fashioned and strict, with strong ideas about what was 'nice' -- apparently having any part of you uncovered other than your arms is 'not nice', according to her mother, because young Sally feels terribly free and naughty walking through a campsite in Scotland in her bra (though it's less a statement of letting it all hang out than because her shoulders are in tatters because of a badly-fitting rucksack).

If her mother was born in 1924, she could easily have made friends with land girls working in the area during WW2.

In France a scruffy little plot of land like that has practically zero value except to an adjacent property. If they aren't interested then it's unsaleable.

On the 1939 register, her mother is 15 and a land worker assisting on her father's farm, so she could have been meeting a lot of land girls during the war.

As I only watched the film after the Observer story, I did notice that GA, playing Raynor in a short scene where she's leaving a voice message to cancel a holiday booking at their farm, simply says something like 'I'm sorry I have to cancel your stay at such short notice. I'm sorry I can't offer another date' -- no mention of a refund.

This ninety-year-old, strong independent woman had proudly told the story of how she was the first woman in the village to wear trousers, of how the other villagers had reviled her for it.

This seems wildly improbable. She was born in 1924 not 1824. There would have been plenty of women wearing trousers by the time she was old enough to scandalise the villagers. Land Army girls would have been arriving on farms from 1939 onwards (when her mother was fifteen).
https://www.womenslandarmy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Image-2-of-Uniform.gif

This wasn't addressed to me but I would say that, unfortunately, the role of publishers is not so much to discover wonderful writers as to discover profitable ones. The days of nurturing a backlist are over. It's perfectly possibly that the commissioning editor of TSP was aware of the shortcomings of the writing style but also reasonably confident that the subject matter was commercial enough to succeed. The commissioning editor's instincts were correct - it was a bestseller - so they did their job.

No matter how bad the writing is in the published book, it would have been even worse before it went out to a copy editor. You have to remember too that ultimately it's the author's book and if they don't want to change something they won't. I remember an editor trying to persuade her author not to include the sentence 'She rolled her eyes across the room at him'. The author couldn't see what was wrong with it (!) and refused to take it out.

And presumably in WW1 as well

"True stories" aye right.

Thanks for that, Rainy (not to be confused with Rain-or ...😜). The Late Victorian materfamilias values do seem to have been shoe-horned in for effect, don't they. And I'm still sceptical about the Land Girl bezzie mate, but maybe that's just me!

A family member born early 1920s wore trousers all her life and into old age. My grandmother (b 1895) most certainly didn't but I think was part of the last generation where it wasn't "usual" for women. She had no issue with other, younger women wearing them though.

I do wonder how much of this sub Thomas Hardy world she describes is accurate and how much is to make them not totally embracing Moth with open arms a "cultural" flaw on their part.

Unheard of, I'd say. Still can't remember where I read it ... but according to ChatGPT, interrogated by moi just now, Michael Joseph gave her a further two-book deal after the success of her first two (TSP & TWS).

EDIT: Typo

So the first one unexpectedly did well and she was commissioned to write a follow up. When that did well too, the publisher realised they had a bit of a phenomenon on their hands and tied her in to a further two books. Bet they're wishing they hadn't now ...

If the fourth book were to be a full mea culpa memoir they could still have a best seller on their hands.