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]

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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?
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

Wasn’t his podcast before her podcast ? Or am I missing a new one ? At the time of the his podcast there was zero impact.🤷‍♀️

Are you watching the latest one? RO has done two podcasts on the subject.

But he's still just another writer, he's got no real knowledge of how things are going to go any more than anyone else. He might HOPE that total disgrace may not be the end of a writer's career (for reasons of his own? I trust not...) but he can't say for certain.

And I don't see Sal doing another pseudonym to get published. I just can't see her sitting quietly, doing zero personal publicity and not wanting Her Adoring Public to know it was her. Besides, her writing is a bit rubbish, she's written the 'one book everyone has inside them', in fact she's written it twice. Everything else she's done has only sold on the reputation of the first big hit. She's not likely to strike gold again.

I was fascinated by the conversation Chloe had with James Urquhart (who located the copy of HNTDDD) - when he describes the way this fiction has more truth about the main protagonists than Sal's non-fiction as "weird". An extract:

Chloe : memoir
James : confession
Chloe : justification (or, an attempt at it)

She's written it three times! Four if we count HNTDDD!

It's just been two segments on the The Rest is Entertainment podcast, @Thedownwardspiralpath -- the most recent one last week, so after the Observer podcast, but not addressing it. I think he and Marina Hyde were responding to a listener's question, so it was discussed fairly briefly in one of their Q and A episodes.

@PsaltyNotASongBook I don't really see it myself, as she's pretty much cast in her lot with the 'pure soul' nature girl persona of 'Raynor Winn' and her tragically deteriorating husband.

Having said that, if PRH ultimately declines to publish OWH, and her agent puts out feelers elsewhere and concludes it's all over for the 'Raynor Winn' brand, and sales of her back catalogue have dwindled, then I wouldn't put it past her to try some kind of 'How I Became Trapped in A Literary Persona That Wasn't All My Fault' kind of book.

Probably written in her 'other' style, the one from the 'confession email', where she both claims that the thefts were like something happening outside herself, and a 'living nightmare', and she was in fact terribly relieved to be found out, because now 'it was finally over'. Something like that. Probably only as a last resort, though, and if she thought she'd milked 'Raynor Winn' dry.

If she did that it would be the death of the other books! I’m starting to see why Penguin have kept quiet!

she's pretty much cast in her lot with the 'pure soul' nature girl persona of 'Raynor Winn' and her tragically deteriorating husband.

Agree @RueMouffetard She isn't a brilliant writer and a lot of the success was due to the wholesome and relatable (sob) story. Now the rock has been lifted and what has crawled out is the opposite of wholesome and relatable, the reverse of the original premise, so the brand isn't just tarnished, it has dissolved into dust.

I think a proper mea culpa would need more insight than she's shown herself capable of. Plenty of spite and bitterness and self justification, but no real insight, ever.

Edited to correct misquote

I’ll have a look thanks.

Ah I see, thanks ☺️

The episode is called 'The Secret PR War Over Graham Norton's Sofa'.

The Q&A comments from The Rest Is Entertainment are from five days ago and are here: skip to [15:20].

I think RO’s comment about Moth is unnecessary and risks reframing public perception. The whole “I met someone who knows the husband and says he’s a lovely man who is genuinely well-liked” comment seems to imply that CH’s investigation can’t be valid in some way (or at least that's how I read it). Not very helpful from a high-profile voice.

Someone can be a lovely person and well liked and and at the same time a swindler. In fact, swindlers are at their best when they are well liked. So saying that Moth is a well liked lovely person is a bit like saying his eyes are blue. A non-sequiteur.

I think “nice” is what people say when they’re not the ones who’ve been swindled and conned. Nice …. Just means enjoyable and pleasant and of course he can play at being nice and he can be good company with his stories and seeing adoration in people’s eyes is a lovely reflection. He can switch on the charm and he’s had Sally under his spell for decades and calls it love, but just scratch under the surface and there’s the opposite of nice. I can’t believe RO is such a fool.

I know I've said it a dozen times so forgive me, but there is no way Timoth isn't up to his neck in the whole thing. He might be 'polishing his boots in the corner' as 'Anne' so vividly put it, but he has been the beneficary of both the thefts and the dosh made from the lies peddled in TSP. He outright lied himself to Bill about his state of health, so many other examples, and is as big a scoundrel as she is in all this.

Yes, writing 'the true story behind the true story' would be a tall order...

I can perfectly easily believe that TW might be an utterly charming person to hang out with. I don't think that has any bearing whatsoever on whether or not he's happily lived off his wife's thefts, including a theft from his own parents, and actively connived in pretending to be dying to make large amounts of money from his wife's 'brand'. 'Niceness' has little or nothing to do with someone's ethics.

Just catching up, and wanting to wish Monsieur @Uricon2 well :)

Me too @StarryGazeyEyes haven't asked a question yet. I don't think I'm going to be able to follow the AMA, as it happens, prior arrangement for a family occasion. I thought I would wait like @DisappointedReader to see what questions have already been asked. If I haven't got a question by tomorrow afternoon, then like @StarryGazeyEyes, I can ask one someone else has.

You don't think SW might go for a big payout, if she thought she'd exhausted all other avenues, and no one was going to publish another 'Walk While Moth Tragically (Kind Of) Dies Again' book for a juicy 'How I Got Carried Away and Then Couldn't Admit I'd Lied' book?

Or she waits till TW shuffles off this mortal coil (and, let's face it, it would be so obviously soooo much easier for her if he died that, in his shoes, I wouldn't be standing on any cliff edges or eating foraged mushrooms she'd come home with) and then says he'd exercised a strange Svengali-type influence over her since the day he looked her in the eye and dipped his Mars in his tea?

Or that she has a dissociative personality disorder and her other self stole and lied, while her pure soul quailed?

Completely agree. She said it herself through her lawyers:

"The Salt Path lays bare the physical and spiritual journey Moth and I shared, an experience that transformed us completely and altered the course of our lives.
"This is the true story of our journey."

End of. Well, thank you and goodbye.

She might write it, but I'm not sure that there would be a market for it. All those people who fell for the 'true story' wouldn't want to read it as they would feel silly that they'd been duped. And those who didn't fall for it all won't WANT to read a pile of self-pitying self-obsessed rubbish.

It will only leave a very small segment of the reading public who might just want to know what the hell she was thinking, and I don't think she has the self-knowledge to even KNOW why she did what she did. A book that basically consists of 'because I could' repeated ad nauseum is not going to sell.

I don't think she'll ever do a mea culpa because that would destroy her 'legacy' as she sees it.

I suspect she'll continue with the ostrich strategy and hope that there are sufficient die hard fans who will buy anything she writes and simply don't care about the scandal.

Moth remains centre stage for as long as Sal churns out books. Without him, her brand goes up in smoke.

Sal's attitude reminds me of an album released in 1975 by Supertramp entitled ' Crisis, what crisis?'

From what we are guessing Salray has earned a considerable amount of money, aided and abetted by her agent and publisher, both of them have also made a lot of money. It is possible for Salray to stop, she doesn't need to write another book, everyone has made enough money, I know you are all laughing now, it's never enough money.

But Salray could, comfortably retire, if she wants to keep writing, she would surely have to use a pseudonym, write some old nonsense and see how it sold. Would Salray really think that she could appear in public as Raynor Winn? the problem is Salray has got away with so much, so many times, she might just think that she can write something to restore her reputation. As long as her agent and publisher keep standing by her, it could add to her belief.

I'm not sure that they will though. Okay, they've made a lot of money out of her, but that will be subject to the law of diminishing returns, the Raynor Winn name - which publishers would usually rely on as the Brand - won't be in the ascendant any more and her writing is so decidedly average that she's unlikely to hit the jackpot again. More likely to bump along in the midlist when she can't lean on the 'dying husband, walking to health, we're so hard done by' ticket any more.

So I'm not certain that PRH or her agent would be that keen to go through all this again every single time she releases another book, whatever name it's under - someone will always know and let on.

Let's hope so @Vroomfondleswaistcoat, that would be the best outcome :)

We assume that Sal is 'minted' for life but what if:

• she had to repay the Cooper creditors for loan amount outstanding
• she had bought a house with no mortgage for her son
• she had bought a house with no mortgage for her daughter
• she decided to repay family members for sums she had stolen
• she had various other debts which she had to repay
• her royalties were in the region of 4% ( book royalties = £800k pre tax)

Then she wouldn't be sitting so pretty.

Then it will serve as a life lesson not to take money that isn't yours, won't it?