Thread 21 : To feel disappointed - and now disgusted too - after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

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

First thread: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet

Links to threads 2-16, the other 20 Observer articles and videos to date, Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement, our timeline and sources can all be accessed in the OP and first few posts of Thread 17: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5403285-thread-17-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Thread 18: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5422393-thread-18-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Thread 19: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5437058-thread-19-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Thread 20: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5454438-thread-20-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 are welcome. It would be helpful to get the background from at least some of the Observer exposé items before posting.
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 drive-by scolders and ploppers 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. Over 5 months we have done amazingly well together for 20 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.

Keep to the path. No saltiness. Our Cardboard Mascot Our Simon has had his head stuck back on and is wearing a very fetching tinsel boa. The charabanc is bedecked with fairy lights and very well stocked up. May the seasonal fudge and mulled cider be with you one and all. 🎅🌲🎁❄️🎄

These threads are the gifts that keep on giving:
New:

• Salt Path: A Very British Scandal, available from Monday 15th December Sky Documentaries and NOW TV
• ‘Don’t look for the money. I’ve taken it all’: Salt Path author Raynor Winn’s ‘confession’ that she stole from her family | The Observer

Up and coming:

• Observer Newsroom: The Real Salt Path Story, Thursday 8th January 2026 6.30-7.30pm. More information and to book via this link observer.co.uk/our-events/the-real-salt-path-story
• Podcast series from The Observer's award-winning Investigative Journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou
• BBC Documentary (NB Not involving Our Chloe)

*MNHQ correcting above 'Documentary' to 'Podcast' at request of author

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 20 IS FULL

I suspect that the CB awards board are just going to keep quiet and let it run. It's probably not worth their while to stand up and say 'yes, but...' and trying to get the prize money back from Sal would be like getting blood out of a stone - she'd probably make them take her to court so she could stand up and plead her case.

So I think it's just all going to go quiet and everyone will just hope it's not raised again.

I'm still cross though.

Does he honestly & potentially care (?), to play devil’s advocate, the ship has sailed…

Sad nodding of agreement here.

If we are taking that attitude, then it only leaves the health lies as ongoing as @SimoArmo said last night, they are not over. I think CH will delve more into all of this, but it's going to be spaced out over a number of podcasts, I think the only headline that will change opinion is the one that says, Raynor Winn has lied about her husband's illness.

I think his point is that it’s not just gullible ‘ordinary readers’ who bought into the fantasy of TSP, though. It was pretty much universal. Reviewers loved it. Prize judges loved it. He’s interested in why certain literary scams ‘work’.

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat — I think you’re probably right.

I suppose it would come down to whether the CB committee or whoever administers the prize felt that potential reputational damage to the prize was outweighed by the potential bad publicity of publicly withdrawing it from TSP.

And I think for that happen, the fact of SW winning the prize under false pretences would have to get a lot more airtime, which I think is probably unlikely. I mean, SW wrongly winning a comparatively small, new literary award looks like fairly small beer compared to the £64k stolen from the Hemmingses, stealing large sums from her mother and PIL, feigning/exaggerating TW’s illness, never having been reduced to living in a tent, only walking the SWCP as a holiday etc etc.

I agree, although the fact of her entering in the first place is almost as much of a fraud as her winning!

And I suspect that the CB committee has tightened up its procedures since. They might well have added a subsequent clause to the terms and conditions which now say you can be stripped of the prize if you're found to have entered fraudulently which wasn't there originally.

Some further thoughts-

Bestselling books bring in money. Publishers can then take risks on other books (I believe this happened with Harry Potter series thus funding other exceptional books otherwise not coming to print)

Rather than using their profits/time/profile to promote causes like homelessness and cbs, they used these causes to promote the book and sell more (e.g Ingram-Moore style). So opposite (first red flag!). This usually gets people found out eventually.

They probably only rent in Cornwall because they owe a lot of money and have awful CCJs against them etc. Who knows if /what has been recouped. Although with some debts there's time limits.

They may not be as wealthy if they used ghostwriter

As said above. I feel really happy that Chloe has given a voice to.the family and Hemmings. And also CBS sufferers

@Returnedforthefudge They may not be as wealthy if they used ghostwriter

I don't think they used a ghostwriter. Good ghostwriters are expensive and you wouldn't use one for a first book because you would have no idea if you would get your money back. And you wouldn't use a crap ghostwriter (although you may use an inexperienced one) because, especially in Sal's case, you'd want it to be your own words.

I'm not saying that an editor won't have told her to 'talk up' some aspects more and maybe put in a bit more of this and that throughout the book, but that's an editor's job, they all do that. But I really don't think these books have the 'gloss' that you'd get from having had it ghostwritten.

I think, if true, impossible to unequivocally prove deceptive intent.

They’re weathy.

Yes, i think you are right. However, even with such a headline, take notice of the devious tactic RW used in her first statement in response to the original Observer piece.

CH never wrote that TW had made up his illness. Indeed, she wrote that she had seen no evidence to suggest TW is not ill. What CH did report was that his illness as presented as CBD in TSP trilogy appeared to be at odds with TWs presentation of illness and what is known about CBD to medical science (re: 18 year survival and a miraculous reversal of symptoms, and brain scan).

Yet RW responded to "heinous" accusations that TW made up his illness. Here, RW was trying to control the narrative by painting CH a cruel villain and switching the focus from valid doubts raised by CH about the veracity of RWs accounts of TWs illness to whether TW has CBD or not. She cemented this with the medical letters to "prove" he has CBD.

Many of us saw through this but many others took her statement at face value in a world where distrust of the media is rife. Could RW employ this strategy again? Maybe, but i think fewer people will buy it second time round.

Very well put, as others have said the medical sequence was out of synch re: letter dates etc too but few spotted. These showed the terminal diagnosis & ‘be careful on the stairs’ not pre x6 Everest distance walk?

Penguin doubled down in support but the medical charity/charities were very quick (too quick?) to disassociate (?)

The more I think about, (puddle of wee, seemingly intermittant symptoms, walking problems) the more it does begin to sound as though Tim's problems could be alcohol related. Do we have any suspicions raised about this (apart from my, admittedly somewhat sour, ones)?

This is supported by the nephew saying that they were both pathological liars. And I suspect the families know more than we ever will.

He may well have a drink problem or it's just made up/embellished. (Wee etc).
It would seem she has based the book on some truths. But that just goes with 'write what you know about'. A lot of writers use life experiences for fiction. (I agree, on reflection that the Ghostwriter is probably a stretch)

It's pretty clear Ruth Saberton is saying Landlines is fiction based on her interview. She can't actually say that though.

I expect they're still terrible with money and I'm not at all concerned with their wealth because that's not important to me.

There's 2 kinds of people. I'm one kind. They're the other. It's horrible when their type invades my types world. But as I've grown older I've got better at spotting it. Wasnt taught as a child. Told to defer to wealth and power. Not now. Just teach our kids to do this. Important more than ever in AI/insta/influencer era.

These kinds are very good at exploiting the kind and vulnerable and using it for their own advantage. That is the worst thing. So important to stay the other type and call out behaviour like this. Why I applaud Chloe and others like her (e.g. post office scandal).

There will be another Raymoth waiting in the wings

How is it impossible to prove? She wrote a book saying our husband was given a CBD diagnosis in 2013 the letter is dated 2015, how much more proof does anybody want? of course you can prove intent, she sat down and deliberately wrote her lies. Salray knew Tim was diagnosed in 2015, she cannot wriggle out of that one.

I am getting frustrated waiting for someone to ask Raynor, how she and Tim were supposedly walking the SWCP in 2013, being mistaken for SA and terminally ill with CBD, when the diagnosis from the consultant neurologist is given at a consultation in 2015, why is this not the first thing that you would ask?

She can't say she misunderstood the diagnosis, he hadn't been given one, I think we established that they would have to be time travellers to pull that one off. It can't be excused by saying Salray was fearing the worst, he had no diagnosis. Ruth Saberton saw through them, I feel the only lie that she can't deny is the date of the diagnosis, it is there in black and white.

I think, given how serious this illness is, there’s a general reluctance to challenge.,

I think it would be powerful if anyone upset by this and affected by it, from the writers here to people with illnesses to carers to those with simply a moral compass, contact Penguin. Perhaps copying the agent as well? There seems to be a silence from the world of publishing , film and celebrity. Pressure from the consumers and customers, which ultimately equates to money and reputation being lost, is probably the only way changes will be made. The book is earning and it seems to be the case that as long as this continues the integrity of the narrative, and indeed the publisher, is very much not an issue.

I do understand what you mean @PinkPanther57, but Tim wasn't diagnosed with anything in the years 2013/2014, not until 2015. Now that the charity has dropped Tim, because they don't even believe the 2015 diagnosis, and why should anyone, there was no mention of walking at that consultation. It's a good point that you make @IvyGoldenM, I have sent a number of emails myself, and not received replies, or I have been fobbed off.

At a guess, I’d say she does not “have the paperwork to support what happened”…

Warren Evans did say in the documentary that the date of 2013 was right (cbs etc not mentioned interestingly)

I did (because I'm a huge cynic) briefly wonder if it really was Warren E and was he also using for his own bed promo by being in documentary. But having watched the documentary twice I don't think that is the case. More likely R&M saw another wealthy person to tap up for resources. Parasites good at that. From this we can surmise that they are regular and accomplished 'sob story' freeloading people outside of the writing. They had indeed lost their home and they told all and sundry this even before the book was written and published. So a definite MO. That comes out clearly in the documentary. And of course they actually did lose their house and how absolutely gutting to fk up your life so much as to lose your home. So I will give them that. Just. They definitely believe they're victims (would also justify to themselves taking from family). But they need to drop it now - 3-4 books later! They can't though. Personality trait. Grifters got to grift.

I dont think we need to forensically examine timelines any more as been clearly shown in recent article that it's all a mish-mash of real and imagined events pieced together at a later point and pitched as fact. Was important during the expose phase but has now been confirmed by recent interviews. In some ways I'm surprised there is still quite some actual fact in there!

Maybe Moth did get a provisional CBS diagnosis (perhaps based on self reported synptoms). But he's clearly very well right now. So it can't be CBS. So stop saying it is. I haven't read any of the subsequent books and actually forgot about him, so I didn't know about the brain scans. But that sounds like a stupid lie too far. What were they thinking?!? People have been stupid so far so why not carry on? Or 'oh this will explain why he's not very ill looking'.
Lies unravel.

I do think Belle Gibson has been mentioned in the past. If you can find it, she did a tv interview where she was grilled for about an hour about her medical diagnosis and what is amazing is….she absolutely doesn’t admit she made it up, even though she obviously did.

In 2015 he didn't actually receive a definitive diagnosis either from what I remember of the consultant letter.

Wasn't it just a possibility?