Thread 16: 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's original exposé: The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...

The 14 Observer items currently available on their online 'The real Salt Path' page: The real Salt Path | The Observer

More from The Observer:
‘Hope is extinguished’: CBD patients respond to Salt Path...
The real Salt Path | The Observer (The Slow Newscast)
I will link to two more Observer videos in the first post of this thread.

The Observer YouTube Channel: The Observer UK - YouTube

Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement: Raynor Winn

Thread One ^www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5368194-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?^

Threads 2-11: Links all in the OP of Thread 12

Thread 12: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5384574-thread-12-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Thread 13: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5386458-thread-13-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Thread 14: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5388981-thread-14-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

New posters joining us in the genuine spirit of our civil discourse welcome. It would be helpful to get the background from at least some of the Observer items above before posting. There are currently a number of interesting items on The Observer website and linked to above.

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. Remember, even Hollywood rabbits attract the odd flea. 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 fifteen 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 our usual reasonable and respectful fashion is very welcome.

Yes, it really is Thread 16.

Keep to the path. No saltiness. May the fudge be with you.

I think Chris Hoy is universally liked and respected. Never heard anything but good about him.

Link for anyone struggling to find it:

The False Path: Thoughts on recent controversies surrounding The Salt Path – T.S. Dymond

Is there anything more to come out, I wonder? We seem to have reached a point where the same ground is being gone over.

If there is new stuff to come out it may come from CH:

• talking to school friends of SW
• tracking down Polly and getting the real story of how long they stayed with her and when they recommenced the walk
• tracking down Anna and getting her account of how they met and when the Walkers began living in the Wesleyan chapel in Polruan
• talking to people who may have a view about whether any part of TSP (title/content) was plagiarised
• talking to various people who appear in TSP - cafe owners, cast members of Iolanthe at the Minack etc etc to ascertain whether the incidents in TSP have been entirely invented or are broadly accurate
• talking to residents of Polruan who may have met them when they first arrived in Polruan
• tracking down Grant (if he exists)
• tracking down and talking to Dave and Julie
• tracking down a copy of HNTDDD
• finding out what part PRH played in any changes in the narrative arc or chronology of TSP

I think more stuff will emerge. Maybe CH will have enough to publish a follow up piece in the Observer, maybe it will form part of a series of podcasts. Who knows, there might even be a docudrama or something of the sort.

There’s the potential for loads more to emerge if people from the Walkers’ past lives are willing to talk. CH has really only spoken with Martin Hemmings’ widow and a few others so far. There are dozens more, including many who’ve been impacted bySW’s words.

Well, I do hope so but it seems to have gone quiet.

You are right. I wanted to find the source, from something that arose yesterday, and in a search the second item was from Thread 12 on here. I was impressed by the posts!

It is why I started to email some of the institutions, that have been responsible for promoting Raynor Winn, with an enquiry.

If everyone is all right with it, I don't think I'd like to walk under giant Moth's legs, just in case I might be tempted to look up the leg of his equally giant shorts.

And I think, even that if old ground is being retrodden continually, it's important to 'keep the case open' as it were. A lot of readers haven't heard about the dishonesty involved in these books - it hasn't exactly made front page news. It needs to be raised and raised because otherwise they (the Walkers) will just wait for the fuss to die down and then re-emerge into literary life and I don't think they should be allowed to profit from a string of lies marketed as 'unflinchingly truthful'. They have a case to answer, which they clearly don't WANT to answer and I think they are just hoping it will all go away.

I'm STILL pathily salty about her (probably) winning a significant amount of money for TSP as a 'first book' when it looks likely that SW was previously published (albeit with a deniability factor built in).

Now imagining Moth as a sort of southwestern Angel of the North striding beshorted above Polruan. Or perhaps one of the St Ives beaches could do an Antony Gormley and have bodycasts of a naked Moth standing about, staring out to sea, as at Crosby Beach. (A friend lives close by, and says the coastguard are still semi-regularly getting calls about what people think are swimmers in difficulty.)

Verity (statue) - Wikipedia

We have our own, on the SWCP, already. The Walkers hated her: she represents truth and justice.

@WhoDaresWinnsYou could also add:
• Talking to Timothy’s nephew- who judging by his now deleted LI revelation may have a lot to disclose.

I agree with @Vroomfondleswaistcoatthat even if nothing new comes out, the major issues still stand and the (paying) public deserve a response. The embezzlement, the timeline and veracity of the claims about Moth’s health, and whether they did actually walk the whole SWCP at the times they claimed are the three big things. I do think there’s potentially an awful lot more if family, former colleagues and acquaintances speak up too.

On a wider scale SW’s behaviour is grossly unfair to other writers. There are so many talented, honest writers out there and to see her gain wealth and huge recognition on the back of such grubby dishonest behaviour is just wrong. It would be great if this case serves as a catalyst for change in the publishing world. That might seem a lot to hope for, but it can only happen by keeping it in the public eye.

Maybe someone from the committee on that award should be contacted and asked if they would consider retracting it out of fairness to other entrants...I think all copies of her 'first book' would be digital downloads that have disappeared into the ether so possibly that couldn't be used in evidence...but they could ask SW to confirm that TSP was indeed her first publication...if not, then I'm sure that fact would trigger a couple of articles.

I wonder if the Walkers have gone on an extended holiday.

I think the problem lies with the 'first book', HNTDDD, being written under a different name, so not SW or RW. She could just deny it. The onus would then be on the committee to prove that she did write it, and it might be more work than they were prepared to put in. I am fairly sure that SW will have signed something when TSP was entered into the award to say that it was her first published work, so she's unlikely to admit it now.

I don't think that it would be possible to strip her of the award, but I do think that tightening up eligibility might be a good idea. And there should certainly be more made of the fact that TSP 'probably' wasn't eligible. That was a lot of money that she won - and given the sales, it wasn't as though she needed it.

This. Completely agree. She’s had so many perks and accolades and been so smug about it. Some of those have been publicly dropped and others have disappeared quietly. Seasalt had done an interview with her in the blog or story section of their website and it’s gone now, which is great. I hope other little affiliations like that just end. It’s a pity the bookshop staff book reviews won’t change but they need to shift the books. If they don’t, could they try and claim back the losses somehow because the content is harmful really. I do t care what Sally says to the contrary, if her message wasn’t to claim that walking hazardous terrain, rough sleeping and surviving on fudge noodles cured her terminally ill and disabled husband, then I will eat my hat, stick and boots. Bookshops deserve compensation. Penguin needs to stop plugging this 💩as honest. It absolutely is a disgrace that she holds an award for first book.

Guilty admission - I published a blog post about the Salt Path this week and got an interesting comment back from a follower in Australia:

There has been plenty of chatter about this book in Aus too and most people express a strong sense of betrayal. We were invested in their story and their success, and now it turns out to be a complete sham. It just shows that the ol’ saying about ‘not spoiling the story with the facts’, still rings true.

A lot of bookshops hold stock on 'sale or return'. So they can return any unsold books to the publisher - the bookshop gets a refund and 'returns' show on the author's royalty sheet (they are deducted from books sold).

I would strongly encourage all independent booksellers to return these books to make a statement that the public don't like being fooled.

However, many readers just don't care. They want books - the morals and lies of the authors are irrelevant to them.

I’m sure CH would have approached him, but I’d imagine that his taking down the LinkedIn comment suggests that, despite his personal animosity towards the Walkers, he’s not prepared to go on the public record about them, for whatever reason — other family members asking him not to stir the pot, a dislike of personal publicity?

I wonder if there's an element of holding back new revelations until the next book comes out, if it does. Releasing more now is unlikely to do do much more damage given the WW reputation is already in tatters. If the fourth book is released then that would be the time to strike.

...which is making me wonder whether the fourth book is in revisions and it's going to be a stream of 'mistakes were made' when it eventually comes out? Not a mea culpa, I don't think she has it in her, but an explanation and tweaking of the 'Great Story' to either try to play on our emotions and invoke sympathy or some other whitewashing of their actions?

I've finally caught up with the last few threads, having fallen by the wayside after walking the path from the start.

I agree that it's important. Every so often on the threads someone comes along and says 'But does it really matter? No-one expects a memoir to be perfectly accurate'. Perhaps not - but when something is said to be 'unflinchingly honest' and the author has stated that the only things changed were names 'to protect privacy', the expectation is already set by both publisher and author.

There are 3 main threads in the book - homelessness, terminal illness, and the walk. We now know the homelessness was directly due to criminality, the illness was not as described and was most likely diagnosed 2 years later, and the walk probably happened in sections over several years.

The worst bit for me is that she persisted with the story of the walking 'curing' Moth's illness over several books, and it sounds like each time the claims are becoming more definite (I haven't read them, but have seen the excerpts here from Landlines re abnormal scans becoming normal). It is horrible how this will have given false hope to some people, and put huge pressure on others.

@AzureStaffy was eloquent about this earlier and it resonated with me, as was @mauvishagain. I have had a diagnosis of cancer in the last year. I have had conventional treatment and am doing well. I am also medical so have some knowledge about the disease and treatments, and trust the team looking after me. However, it is terrifying how much deliberate misinformation is available on social media and the wider internet - just ready for anyone hoping for help. These scams are simply designed to make money from vulnerable people. To my mind the later books at least could fall into this category.

I imagine that at this point, with no new stories appearing in the Observer for a few weeks, whatever lucky editor had responsibility for On Winter’s Hill is having to make decisions about whether to cancel it, to publish as is with a lengthy additional foreword by SW addressing the allegations, or to commission essentially a new book which addresses them, probably in conjunction with a walk travelogue and more of SW’s characteristic musings about the natural world.

The snag with either of the latter is that it involves SW playing ball and admitting some culpability. If she won’t, and it comes down to simply publishing OWH as it is or not, I imagine the decision would be based on whether they think that it would still turn a profit, ie. If there are enough diehard fans who will say ‘Oh, I heard there was some negative story, but I still like the books’.

And in this case, the publicity people would also have a dilemma. Not only would they have to recast the press releases, blurb material etc away from the ‘unflinching honesty’ take, they would also have to decide whether SW doing publicity (if she was prepared to) would actually have a negative effect on sales. And, whether, if she did do ‘normal’ publicity, she’d crack under accusing questions. Books do sell without an author doing publicity, obviously (Elena Ferrante etc), but would OWH? Would a single, high-profile ‘mistakes were made’ interview with a sympathetic interviewer be enough?

(ETA — I don’t know whether enough is generally known about the contents of OWH for it to be impossible to use the walk in it as the spine for SW musing about her ‘mistakes’? Ie would readers in general know perfectly well that these would have had to be retrofitted to a walk done before CH contacted SW?)

I think the backlist will sell it. Those who are completist and want the full set, those readers who don't care about the controversy because they just like the writing, those who don't BELIEVE (and they exist) that SW has done anything wrong - they will all buy it. It won't sell in anything like the numbers that the previous books did, but it will sell and without SW doing any in-person publicity. If they need a person to talk about the book in interviews, then her agent or editor can do it. I am sure SW will plead 'poor mental health' or a decline in Tim's health to keep her out of the public eye - again, playing on our sympathies.

If PRH don't publish OWH exactly as is i.e. as per the 'Moth declining, SW can't accept it' current blurb then they are effectively saying that it wasn't true.