Thread 24 : To feel disappointed - and now disgusted and vindicated too - after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 23 IS FULL

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?
Links to threads 18-20 can be found in the OP of Thread 21: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5460943-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?
Thread 22:www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5470952-thread-22-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?
Thread 23:www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5475246-thread-23-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?

Most recent:

• Salt Path: A Very British Scandal, available on Sky Documentaries and NOW TV, 15th December 2025
• ‘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
• Observer Newsroom: The Real Salt Path Story, Thursday 8th January 2026

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. For over 6 months we have done amazingly well together for 23 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.

After 23,000 posts there are still new things to look out for on the path:

• Podcast series (7 episodes) from The Observer's award-winning Investigative Journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou (and including a shoutout to our threads), 13th January 2026:

The Walkers: The real Salt Path | The Observer

• The Observer, 18th January 2026:

The Salt Path scandal: a hunch, a hint and six months of ... and Publishers agree The Salt Path crossed a line | The Observer

• BBC Podcast, 28th January 2026 (to be confirmed)

Please start each post with the podcast episode you are commenting on, for clarity and to help others avoid spoilers if they wish to do so. Many thanks.

After listening to of The Walkers: The real Salt Path podcast episodes from The Observer my thoughts are even more with the victims. I also believe that the publishers, agent and prizegivers must now act and be seen to act.

As always, keep to the path, no saltiness, eat fudge and drink cider.

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 23 IS FULL

Love it, I think he was jolly good especially considering it is G&S and amateur.

It's not the RSC at Stratford and none the worse for it.

I'm keen to attend as a copy of Beowulf.

I can't yet decide whether to be a well worn copy, a shiny new one, or an imaginary one.( Any of those can of course be represented by a neat, bookish badge and ordinary clothes.)

The posers would need to report their own posts to MNHQ and ask for them to be deleted

Please may someone post a link to the AMA with Our Chloe? I can’t find the previous messages with links. Thanks!

I think this is the link:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/AMA/5480174-mnhq-here-ama-with-award-winning-investigative-journalist-chloe-hadjimatheou-weds-28th-jan-7-9pm?page=3&reply=150115807

As it has been a horrid evening with paramedics for Uricon2Esquire (still at home with v strong antibiotics) I watched Miss Kate Bush and her inimitable performance of 'Wuthering Heights', following @DisappointedReader

I attempted some moves and think I may have done some sort of permanent damage to my spine😂, being a 60 odd charabancer and not the lithe teen I was when I first heard that song.

The controversy doesn't seem to be having a huge impact on film goers in Warminster. 73% liked it!

People who had seen the controversy and been put off by it wouldn't have gone, so you can't tell what effect it had on the film that way.

Maybe you are right - 80% of recent Amazon reviews of TSP give it the thumbs down and a 1 star rating

Sorry to hear this @Uricon2 , I hope you and the Mr both have a more peaceful day today xx

If I make the meet up, I’ll come as one of the wood-dwelling hippies. Or a path walker with less validity than S&T. Neither of those will require any different clothes to my normal look 😆

And, as we've pointed out here before, the film is a different creature to the book. People will be enjoying GA and JI and the scenery. Inconsistencies have been ironed out or rationalised and even a true memoir filmed is an invention (presuming it's not a documentary-format filmed as it happens). So films are, of necessity, ALWAYS going to be fake.

I don't think we can judge the film by the same criteria as the book. It's like judging a cow against a horse.

I think this post might be eligible for an award for sheer random 'you had to be there'ness.

Imagine trying to explain it to someone....

I agree. I watched the film before reading the book, and really enjoyed the film for all the reasons you describe (the acting, the scenery, the story) but didn’t really like the book when I read it.

I read the book after Our Chloe’s exposé, so there is a real possibility this affected my feelings about it, but I just didn’t like RW’s writing style and generally found it hard going.

I may turn up as history in a glass.

I've not asked a question yet on the AMA, so if anyone has any they would really like asked but have already posted, do shout, otherwise I may ask about how they got the flat in Polruan.

Which is interesting compared to the previous high ratings. Because the book hasn't changed. But Brand Raynor Winn has questions hanging over it now.

Yes, the book is different to the film to the literary festivals to the Gigspanner tours. However, it was all Brand Raynor Winn. Even the cups and the notebooks.

An upsetting time for the family - but it is Brand Beckham that has questions over it. There are the pants, and the fashion shows and Davos - but all the same brand.

I think that's true. The book is the same, clearly, in its pedestrian prose, weird patches of mean-spiritedness in between purple passages about salt winds and headlands, and paeans to Moth, but of the kind of readers who really liked it, many did so because it was written by that nice, ordinary woman they saw on TV, and whom they felt they knew, and because they liked to think that they too would stride bravely out along the coast with a tent, away from homelessness and a death sentence, like that nice woman and her unfortunate (but also terribly nice) husband. The Raynor Winn brand was curiously compelling.

Now that brand is tainted.

Interesting to think about 'Raynor Winn' as if she were a sportsperson, or indeed a Beckham. Which sponsors would be cutting ties? Sports sponsors have dropped stars for doping, drink-driving, unpalatable political opinions, personal scandals, criminal activity etc etc. Lance Armstrong, Tiger Woods, Wayne Rooney, Manny Pacquio etc etc.

The PSPA charity dropped RW immediately, as did Gigspanner. Did the SWCP drop her as an 'ambassador'? The Salt Path is still linked on their home page, but it's the film, not the book, though obviously RW is mentioned as author. All the images in the presspack are of Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs, not the Walkers.

I only listened to the recent The Rest is Entertainment bit yesterday. It wasn't telling us anything new, but I suppose it's interesting to compare the lack of consequences for SW within publishing compared to what would have happened to her in, say, sport. And that no apologetic press releases were forthcoming from PRH, no hurried resignations, fallings on swords etc.

Richard Osman seemed to see the only consequence for SW as for her 'next book', but forecast that her next book after that would be all about this, and would probably sell well.

But I'm not sure how much to trust his take on this, given that he didn't seem particularly up to speed on the most recent developments.

Could SW even write a 'warts and all', hands up book? Even if commissioned for some vast sum?

You are right that they are different creatures. But I think it is important to recognise that the film would not exist without the book and the film perpetuates many of the themes in the book, such as healing power of nature, cosplaying homelessness etc. I don't think the film can be considered an independent work and get a pass simply because it is a dramatisation and therefore "fake". It is a dramatisation but the basis of that dramatisation is in purportedly true events, events which are largely in fact false. I don't blame the producers. I agree the film should not be judged by the same criteria as the book, but I think it should nevertheless be judged without ignoring the book and falsehoods presented.

Well, if you travel in your costume, as you clearly should, you'll be doing enough explaining to everyone in your train carriage about your Fairy/Shepherd/Entire House of Lords costume. It might be easier to say 'I am a Celebrated Literary In-Joke!'

I don't think Richard Osman is talking with any kind of insider knowledge. He's right in that a lot rests on whether OWH is well received (or, indeed, published at all), but I think Brand Raynor Winn is dead and I don't think PRH will keep Sally Walker signed. There is the possibility that she might change her name again and write books for another publisher, but I think it would need to be a small independent and she'd have to be writing fiction - and I don't think she'd stand up well against the competition.

So the poor dear might have to admit the end of her writing dreams and just recline on her millions.

Would an indie sign her as a pseudonymous 'debut', though, without the might of the Raynor Winn brand, however tainted, behind her? Interesting problem for her agent, too, in representing her as 'Raynor Winn' and as FictionNomdePlume...

It didn't stop him though - gosh, how many times did he say "zero impact".

Previously, I had been grateful for him being, that rare creature, who said anything at all. Yesterday, I pasted this into my notes:

Richard Osman, in his podcast, kept repeating incessantly zero impact on sales, etc.

This is because, if there is time in asking questions to Chloe, that was going to be my follow-up to the one I have asked - it is no. 2 in the list, I think, (not saying this in any way makes it the 2nd most important!).

I felt he glossed over the recent TSP developments in his podcast and it's also clear he hasn't listened to CH's podcast (and needs to as someone who's relatively influential and well liked in the UK). Since my last post, I’ve learnt that PRH is the parent company of his publisher, which explains his comments and the "zero impact" glossing over.

I don't think that's quite fair. I mean, I think he could probably say pretty much anything about any imprint of PRH because he's such a bankable bestseller -- they need him more than he needs them.

But no, he hasn't listened to the podcast.

I do think he's sincere in saying there's been minimal impact on sales and and on publishing culture in general (to date). I'm not sure he's wrong about the latter, either. Certainly I've been poking around literary agent websites lately for unrelated reasons, and TSP is absolutely still referenced as a 'type of non-fiction title I'd like to see' on a scattering.

I don’t see how she can write the true story of this experience. She has already told her ‘true ‘story which means she can’t admit the truth as told by the Observer’s expose. What would there be to say? It would only draw more attention to her lies.