Page 5 | Thread 15: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

SimoArmo · 14/08/2025 17:52

RejoinedbecauseofTSPthreads · 14/08/2025 17:39

There's a lot of 'Cornwall' bingo in the book. Cream teas, pasties, rockpools, harbours, 2nd home owners, day trippers, crowds, overpriced ice creams. Another reason to doubt its unflinchingly honest account and its 'appeal to tourists' marketability.

In answer to OP, I have no set way of doing a cream tea... I love it any way. I've even been known to order a coffee with it. Outrageous.

Instant noodles is also a trope. They're also more of a younger person's cheap food. I don't remember in my student days them being such a big thing as 10 15 yrs later. Also for someone who raised dc not on huge money surely she'd be much better at creating meals on the cheap...
Anyway it doesn't matter as I think we all agree it's a work of fiction!

And as another OP said - there's no such thing as a true story. Even the News is curated to tell a view.

I don't actually have a problem with this.

I think most people have a problem with fraud though. And lying about medical issues (I know not evidenced)

She'd have probably got away with it if she'd not done the film promo interviews tbh.

The film I thought was quite enjoyable. Definitely watchable. The scenery carries it and great actors

Sorry I've probably derailed all your excellent sleuthing with my 15 threads worth of musings.

One other thing I've learnt from this thread is just how much info on a person is available via public channels. I never thought people would be able to find photos from newspapers 50 years ago. Seems you can. Good job I'm not doing anything anyone would wish to look me up for as was regularly in the local paper as a child 🙄

I think the thing about true stories isn't so much we expect them to be presenting fact after fact after fact that can be verified. If we wanted that kind of writing we would all read extremely dull academic papers. Like you say, stories even in the news have angles and perspectives. But a story that presents itself as "this really happened" when actually a totally different thing happened in a very different way, and is intentionally concealed from the paying reader, that's not a viewpoint of a real event, that's deceit.

Fandango52 · 14/08/2025 17:58

SimoArmo · 14/08/2025 17:52

I think the thing about true stories isn't so much we expect them to be presenting fact after fact after fact that can be verified. If we wanted that kind of writing we would all read extremely dull academic papers. Like you say, stories even in the news have angles and perspectives. But a story that presents itself as "this really happened" when actually a totally different thing happened in a very different way, and is intentionally concealed from the paying reader, that's not a viewpoint of a real event, that's deceit.

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But a story that presents itself as "this really happened" when actually a totally different thing happened in a very different way, and is intentionally concealed from the paying reader, that's not a viewpoint of a real event, that's deceit.

That’s how I feel too.

Vroomfondleswaistcoat · 14/08/2025 17:59

SimoArmo · 14/08/2025 17:52

I think the thing about true stories isn't so much we expect them to be presenting fact after fact after fact that can be verified. If we wanted that kind of writing we would all read extremely dull academic papers. Like you say, stories even in the news have angles and perspectives. But a story that presents itself as "this really happened" when actually a totally different thing happened in a very different way, and is intentionally concealed from the paying reader, that's not a viewpoint of a real event, that's deceit.

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This is basically what I was groping for in my post above. That we can accept that events aren't going to be exactly as they are portrayed - who can remember a conversation word for word that they had even say a week ago? So we allow some mild massaging of the 'facts' for the purpose of reading something that is more entertaining than someone's diary entry. But it's when we are told that those events are TRUE and honest - when we are being fed the narrative that we must believe in all this, rather than allowing that a little bit of creative licence might have been used - that is where it crosses the line. CBD was presented as a fact, as was the matter of the cause of the homelessness. Neither of these would seem to be as presented, even though the book is supposed to be true, and that's the bit that gets firmly up my nose.

Catwith69lives · 14/08/2025 18:02

The irony is that despite all the excellent sleuthing over the last 15 threads, there are still a helluva a lot of basic facts we don't yet know about the TSP saga:

why and when did TW leave his job at the NT?
why did they buy a property in France?
what drove SW to start embezzling from the Hemmings?
who wrote HNTDDD and how much (if any) was re-used in TSP?
how much of the SWCP did Raymoth walk and over what period?
to what degree were the whole Walker clan complicit in the saga?
when did SW come up with the idea for TSP and start writing?
how much of the fiction in TSP was known by PRH?
how was TSP turned around so quickly from first cut to publication?
why, with TW's miraculous expanding life expectancy, which defied medical norms, didn't the penny drop earlier that the medical claims made in TSP,TWS and LL about CBD were essentially fiction?

FurryHappyKittens · 14/08/2025 18:09

There's truth and there's truth.

Truth 1.
You lose your home because you were taken advantage of by an old friend (they weren't), then a week later one of you is diagnosed with a terminal illness called CBD (he wasn't), so you end up homeless (they weren't) and shortly afterwards walk the SWCP (they didn't).

Truth 2.
You buy land and a doer upper in France in 2007. Several years later you lose your main home as an indirect result of one of you embezzling £60,000+ from your employer. You walk a little bit of the SWCP a couple of months after that. Two years on, a consultant suggests the other of you has a mild, indolent form of a set of symptoms known as CBS, but advises to just be careful.

Even if you write about things you did ten or twenty or thirty years ago, I think you'd remember the key points that you were hanging your story on, even if there was embellishment of conversations, and mistakes made in descriptions of places, and so on.

RejoinedbecauseofTSPthreads · 14/08/2025 18:17

It's not the book that's bothering us

It's 'them' as a real people in all of her interviews and appearances. By that I mean the Continued reinforcement of lies. Its why there are 15 threads.

Writing a book that's a bit made up is totally usual in my experience.

So I think we can all agree that until she was obviously out talking about all of the bad stuff that happened to them a lot...that's when it became a problem. And when people contacted journalists. Writing a book full of half truths is not as hurtful as consistently coming out to bat (im a self centred way no less) for homelessness and life limiting illnesses on prime time TV with the goddess of TV that is Gillian Anderson. Especially when there are actual homeless people and seriously ill people a plenty and statistically a crisis right now. British people (myself included) absolutely hate this. It's culturally not tolerated. I think getting ahead through lies and deceipt has different perceptions... generally it is not applauded in the UK unless it is very clearly an underdog story. Which this is trying to be and that had been exposed.

Publishers probably fully aware all along. They're in business to sell books. They've sold a lot of this one and spin offs

It's the TV interviews and real life stuff this undercover journalism has put a stop to. We don't need someone pretending to have lived experience. It's taking the voice away from those that do. It's what journalism at its best is all about.

As I said earlier. Fantastic closure for those she trod on while climbing the greasy pole of sucess.

I don't wish any of them ill will of any sort.

Uricon2 · 14/08/2025 18:21

I've been thinking about Gerald Durrell's Corfu Trilogy (beloved from childhood) I think anyone reading it makes allowance for a large amount of comic creativity and it's known that Larry was depicted as single and living at the succession of villas with the family, where in fact he was married and elsewhere on the island for most of the time. The divine Margot said fondly that "my brother has made a career out of libelling me" or words to that effect.

Does anyone care? I don't (especially as the most hilarious incidents almost invariably involve Larry) I also don't care about the massive changes made in the IMO excellent recent TV series where Spiros is played by an absolutely gorgeous actor and shown to be mutually in love with Louisa Durrell, both major departures from even Gerry's account. All of those depicted are long dead, there is no malice involved and I don't think Gerry ever pretended that it was an "unflinchingly honest" account of his childhood. It is a confection that contains truth (especially about the animals) and depicts an idyll that would shortly be wrecked by war, with very sadly some of the "real" characters as casualties.

TSP is however deliberately and cynically deceptive for reasons we have come to know and the motivation feels very different.

Vroomfondleswaistcoat · 14/08/2025 18:22

Writing a book that's a bit made up is totally usual in my experience. This is as maybe, but then being told that it's "unflinchingly honest" is not totally usual.

MyGodMyThighs · 14/08/2025 18:23

Something you said on the last thread @featherbed:

I do wish she had done an interview/ Q and A with someone from, say, a creative writing programme, who be much less interested in her life but would ask very concrete questions about her writing process, what her first draft typically looks like, how she revises, the experience of being edited, what her worst writing problem is etc.

I’ve always found it interesting she has never popped up on the London Writers Salon podcast. They interview big names and plenty of memoirists. Yet she’s not there, in over 150 episodes. I wonder if they have ever approached her and if she declined.

In fact, she’s not on any of the big writing podcasts. Which is… odd.

Fandango52 · 14/08/2025 18:30

Catwith69lives · 14/08/2025 18:02

The irony is that despite all the excellent sleuthing over the last 15 threads, there are still a helluva a lot of basic facts we don't yet know about the TSP saga:

why and when did TW leave his job at the NT?
why did they buy a property in France?
what drove SW to start embezzling from the Hemmings?
who wrote HNTDDD and how much (if any) was re-used in TSP?
how much of the SWCP did Raymoth walk and over what period?
to what degree were the whole Walker clan complicit in the saga?
when did SW come up with the idea for TSP and start writing?
how much of the fiction in TSP was known by PRH?
how was TSP turned around so quickly from first cut to publication?
why, with TW's miraculous expanding life expectancy, which defied medical norms, didn't the penny drop earlier that the medical claims made in TSP,TWS and LL about CBD were essentially fiction?

Is it worth maybe sending these questions to CH to reflect on?

WhispersInTheFlowers · 14/08/2025 18:32

Vroomfondleswaistcoat · 14/08/2025 18:22

Writing a book that's a bit made up is totally usual in my experience. This is as maybe, but then being told that it's "unflinchingly honest" is not totally usual.

Plus going on tv/ radio to reinforce the 'unflinchingly honest' story. At no time ever as far as I'm aware saying 'I must stress that my husband's illness is ATYPICAL, EXTREMELY MILD AND INDOLENT.'

Catwith69lives · 14/08/2025 18:40

Fandango52 · 14/08/2025 18:30

Is it worth maybe sending these questions to CH to reflect on?

Show quote history

Or PRH to answer ( in advance of her next book tour where she may have to fend off such devilishly aggressive bowling from the fee paying public....)

It's the sheer unadulterated deceit that has been perpetuated in every single interview/article since her first appearance on Saturday Live ( with the Rev Richard Coles) in 2018, which gets me.

I contacted the Rev Richard Coles about the controversy, and to his great credit, he admitted he, like so many others, was completely conned.

RejoinedbecauseofTSPthreads · 14/08/2025 18:44

Yes if I was her PR person I'd be saying now is the time to stop speaking about homelessness and serious illness. Which is in fact why she has. They probably had it in the film rights agreement she had to help promote the film.
The film is actually quite watchable. As I said previously because of scenery and actors and because films of the art house kind deploy artistic licence anyway and heavily stylised. It started going south when they did cider farm and all of the interviews, sequel books and becoming the voice of all of these topics plus Cornwall and walking.... that was a dumb move. Lies do generally catch up with people eventually (karma you could call it). Working in a fraud environment it happens more often than people think. It's also really not a happy existence living on a bed of lies. It's why I sleep easy.

WhispersInTheFlowers · 14/08/2025 18:46

Catwith69lives · 14/08/2025 18:40

Or PRH to answer ( in advance of her next book tour where she may have to fend off such devilishly aggressive bowling from the fee paying public....)

It's the sheer unadulterated deceit that has been perpetuated in every single interview/article since her first appearance on Saturday Live ( with the Rev Richard Coles) in 2018, which gets me.

I contacted the Rev Richard Coles about the controversy, and to his great credit, he admitted he, like so many others, was completely conned.

Edited

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Surely she won't get off Scot-free in future interviews - and surely there will always be trepidation now about what the public might ask? I think she will be consigned to pre- recorded interviews and no live events.

SunlitUpland · 14/08/2025 18:47

Vroomfondleswaistcoat · 14/08/2025 18:22

Writing a book that's a bit made up is totally usual in my experience. This is as maybe, but then being told that it's "unflinchingly honest" is not totally usual.

I just think ‘unflinchingly honest’ used in a marketing byline means something as vague as ‘Some version of this happened, and the book contains some credibly ugly details about wild pooing, illness and emotions’. (Well, not necessarily wild pooing.)

WhispersInTheFlowers · 14/08/2025 18:54

RejoinedbecauseofTSPthreads · 14/08/2025 18:44

Yes if I was her PR person I'd be saying now is the time to stop speaking about homelessness and serious illness. Which is in fact why she has. They probably had it in the film rights agreement she had to help promote the film.
The film is actually quite watchable. As I said previously because of scenery and actors and because films of the art house kind deploy artistic licence anyway and heavily stylised. It started going south when they did cider farm and all of the interviews, sequel books and becoming the voice of all of these topics plus Cornwall and walking.... that was a dumb move. Lies do generally catch up with people eventually (karma you could call it). Working in a fraud environment it happens more often than people think. It's also really not a happy existence living on a bed of lies. It's why I sleep easy.

Could not agree more re clear conscience. No amount of book success on earth can replace it. You can atone for past mistakes, you absolutely can but I can't see evidence of atonement in SW ( as evidenced by her weak rebuttal re embezzlement). She will just continue to deny it.

mauvishagain · 14/08/2025 18:54

who wrote HNTDDD and how much (if any) was re-used in TSP?

We don't know about the second part of this question but I think that SW has more or less answered the first part herself; from her statement -

In desperation, we briefly tried running a book-based house raffle like others had done, but quickly realised it was a mistake as it clearly wasn’t going to work. We cancelled it and refunded the few participants.

Now which book might that have been?

The only question there is whether it was written by one or both of the Walkers; and I'm seeing them as something of a hydra - one beast, two heads.

UpfromSomerset · 14/08/2025 18:55

Catwith69lives · 14/08/2025 18:02

The irony is that despite all the excellent sleuthing over the last 15 threads, there are still a helluva a lot of basic facts we don't yet know about the TSP saga:

why and when did TW leave his job at the NT?
why did they buy a property in France?
what drove SW to start embezzling from the Hemmings?
who wrote HNTDDD and how much (if any) was re-used in TSP?
how much of the SWCP did Raymoth walk and over what period?
to what degree were the whole Walker clan complicit in the saga?
when did SW come up with the idea for TSP and start writing?
how much of the fiction in TSP was known by PRH?
how was TSP turned around so quickly from first cut to publication?
why, with TW's miraculous expanding life expectancy, which defied medical norms, didn't the penny drop earlier that the medical claims made in TSP,TWS and LL about CBD were essentially fiction?

Only a suggestion for a couple of additions - why did SW lose the hotel job at Abersoch? and - what happened to the 2nd car seen leaving their Welsh property at 2am? as reported by the eyewitness farmer. (Or did the witness mistake 2 cars for a car with a towing caravan?) Oh and why choose the SWCP (was it because they already had material that could be woven into the story.)

SunlitUpland · 14/08/2025 18:56

MyGodMyThighs · 14/08/2025 18:23

Something you said on the last thread @featherbed:

I do wish she had done an interview/ Q and A with someone from, say, a creative writing programme, who be much less interested in her life but would ask very concrete questions about her writing process, what her first draft typically looks like, how she revises, the experience of being edited, what her worst writing problem is etc.

I’ve always found it interesting she has never popped up on the London Writers Salon podcast. They interview big names and plenty of memoirists. Yet she’s not there, in over 150 episodes. I wonder if they have ever approached her and if she declined.

In fact, she’s not on any of the big writing podcasts. Which is… odd.

I don’t think many writers would rate her writing, really. Or wouldn’t think she’s likely to have a lot to say that would be of much interest to writing students or to people approaching her purely as a writer — I imagine that one day online Arvon course was probably something that was more about exercises about being observant or on describing a natural environment that means something to you using all your senses etc.

In fact, I imagine she’d have lots to say about selectiveness and putting a story arc together if she were being honest, but you can see why she’d avoid situations where she’d be asked about process and revision!

SunlitUpland · 14/08/2025 19:01

WhispersInTheFlowers · 14/08/2025 18:46

Surely she won't get off Scot-free in future interviews - and surely there will always be trepidation now about what the public might ask? I think she will be consigned to pre- recorded interviews and no live events.

Show quote history

That’s why, if there is to be another book, it’s going to have to include, either in the text, or as a postscript, some form of (adulterated) mea culpa, I think. Even if it’s still to an extent self-exonerating. Probably ‘I made mistakes and I hated lying, and all the dishonest publicity was torture for me, but I was too afraid to speak out, but hey, Moth is actually ill now.’

mauvishagain · 14/08/2025 19:07

I can't remember who our embezzlement correspondent is, sorry, but I have a general question. I'm sure it was said that partners always know about embezzlement, and I can believe that that is often the case. But always? I can think of situations (eg where someone has gambled away the family fortune) where a person embezzles to recoup their losses, and their partner is blissfully unaware as the gambling problem has been hidden.

NB I am not suggesting that any part of that scenario applies to the Walkers.

So this was just a question about how often you think that partners might be unaware? ('m not suggesting that applies here either btw!)

Catwith69lives · 14/08/2025 19:08

SunlitUpland · 14/08/2025 18:56

I don’t think many writers would rate her writing, really. Or wouldn’t think she’s likely to have a lot to say that would be of much interest to writing students or to people approaching her purely as a writer — I imagine that one day online Arvon course was probably something that was more about exercises about being observant or on describing a natural environment that means something to you using all your senses etc.

In fact, I imagine she’d have lots to say about selectiveness and putting a story arc together if she were being honest, but you can see why she’d avoid situations where she’d be asked about process and revision!

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Great irony is that she lives 'just down the road' from Patrick Gale ( the UK's most westerly living novelist).

He (PG) was in charge of the NC Book Festival (which has hosted SW) for many years and opens his garden at Trevilley ( SW follows his IG feed) under the NGS scheme.

Patrick Gale had his moment in the sun ( after writing umpteen novels) when 'Pictures at an Exhibition' was selected by Richard and Judy's Bookclub ( they live nearby) as one of their books of the month.

So ( my point) is that Cornwall's (arguably) finest* (if only the county's 2nd best selling author after SW! ) HAS tacitly endorsed her work!

*Apologies to Daphne du Maurier

TheBrandyPath · 14/08/2025 19:08

@SunlitUpland Moth is actually ill now.

This is why they will always have the upper hand. They say he is too ill to walk/the walk has led to a miraculous recovery.

He only has until Christmas/the scans show improvement.

The illness and improvement are interchangeable depending on what they consider to be expedient at any given time.

And no one can say any different.

RejoinedbecauseofTSPthreads · 14/08/2025 19:11

Publisher can put out the new book a bit later than planned then low key on the promo. Lots of people don't read papers or follow news as much as others so some people will buy it. There will be people who want to. She'll just then fade away for a bit and maybe pop up now and then to open a pasty shop or whatever. It's what usually happens. As well as the public hating liars the road to redemption is always possible too. If I were her (which I'd never be as a ND person I can't lie at all convincingly and still feel guilt for minor things i did as a teen) then I'd just ride it out. The money can't be taken back.(they'll probably blow it anyway as that's their MO)
I kind of feel sorry for her with her handsome but by all accounts before his very serious illness not especially useful DH. In some ways I hope he has made up the serious CBD because no one wants that on anyone. If he is very sick then I hope the money brings him some comfort.
Yes lots of unanswered questions. So let's assume they have a PR reading this (they will. PR companies have trackers on SM sites). They'll know that journalists (and Mn's) still have a lot of unanswered questions!

RejoinedbecauseofTSPthreads · 14/08/2025 19:16

mauvishagain · 14/08/2025 19:07

I can't remember who our embezzlement correspondent is, sorry, but I have a general question. I'm sure it was said that partners always know about embezzlement, and I can believe that that is often the case. But always? I can think of situations (eg where someone has gambled away the family fortune) where a person embezzles to recoup their losses, and their partner is blissfully unaware as the gambling problem has been hidden.

NB I am not suggesting that any part of that scenario applies to the Walkers.

So this was just a question about how often you think that partners might be unaware? ('m not suggesting that applies here either btw!)

I think in his case yes. Because they were neither working much and they were renovating a property and buying property in France and probably other things

Presumably that's why they neede the money.

Although maybe he'd set up an orphanage in Africa and that'll be book 5?!?