Thread 25 : To feel disappointed - and disgusted and vindicated now 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 24 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?

After 24,000 posts there are still recent, new and up-and-coming things to look out for on the path.
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:

• 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
• Ask Me Anything thread MNHQ here: AMA with award winning investigative journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou, Weds 28th Jan, 7-9pm | Mumsnet

Up-and-coming:

• Our Chloe's short video about Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's first book How not to Dal dy Dir - date to be confirmed.
• BBC Podcast - date to be confirmed

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. The Observer's new podcast series The Walkers (link above) covers most things.
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 7 months we have done amazingly well together for 24 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.

If you are posting about a podcast, please start your post with the episode number you are commenting on, for clarity and to help others avoid spoilers if they wish to do so. Many thanks.

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

As we enter our quarter century thread riding the community charabanc, as always keep to the path, no saltiness, eat fudge and drink cider.

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 24 IS FULL 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? | Mumsnet

Yes, me too. It shows a mock humility on their part. It shows blatant lies which were not part of the personas they were presenting themselves as.

The bookseller says: "Tim, on the other hand, was ... [a] very outgoing person, he seemed to be pretty open about his life." I wonder if TW said that he had herded llamas with cats, been an Ametican footballer, seen battleships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, or whatever.

I'm pleasantly surprised to hear that their former town still has at least two local bookshops.

The chap who bought HNTDDD doesn't recall being apprpached and offered a refund by Gangani Publishing. If such an unusual communication had happened, he would be likely to have remembered it.

I was not expecting any change, after all these months, but there were signs to me yesterday, in bookshops, that the Raynor Winn brand is a busted flush.

In Waterstones, there were no RW books in Local. Huge waves from that endless horizon swept over me - in relief.

What surprised me more was that RW was also missing from Nature. That strong connection to the natural world had been cast aside in an urban environment.

The RW books were now all in British Travel.

Then in the museum, TSP was on a "I don't think we'll ever sell these" shelf. It was 40% off and next to How to Decorate your Tree (for Christmas) and the Christmas Song Book. Jingle bells ....

I’ve not read the salt path or watched the film. I was drawn to this thread because I live in North Devon and have walked bits of the SWCP. I also like to go for a beer in the pub that has never had a pub quiz 😉

anyway I’ve enjoyed reading the threads and recently decided to listen to the podcasts. I’m a dinosaur 🦕 this is a new departure for me 🤣🤣

on the back of the very short book excerpts I heard on them who on earth thought that SW/RW should narrate her own audio book? I know she can’t help her speech impediment but it’s really distracting.

thats my take on the matter 🤣🤣 along with visit Westward Ho! because it’s lovely and you can have a lovely pint in the infamous pub with a glorious sea view 💕

The next question is, why did they all lie about TSP being her first book? Why did Tim have to act so baffled by it? It seems they didn’t need to lie about it because the rules of the CB prize at that time were different. If they are asked this question, I wonder what they will say? I think we all know the answer.

That’s nice to know ❤️

I remember a phrase used by @Vroomfondleswaistcoat the other day - faux naivety - along with the fact they regularly and systematically lie. Both of them. The difference is she remembers the agreed line more often. He has to be sent on an errand as he is a loose cannon.

I agree that her problems with ‘r’ and ‘l’ and her strange little gaspy in-breaths make her very difficult to listen to, but I think the reason they had her narrate her own audiobook is because its fanbase thought they really knew her and TW, and that the books were an unmediated communion with people who were almost personal friends.

So the fact that SW is a dreadful narrator of her own writing was less important than the fact that a significant body of her readers wanted to listen to their friend Raynor talking to them directly, without the barrier of an actress.

Same (I assume) as Gigspanner thinking she’d add something to their gigs despite the fact that she’s hard to listen to and not a natural performer.(I mean, rather than having her write things for their shows and then delivered by someone else.)

I’m doubting that even that way of talking is really Sally Walker and not just another fabricated characterisation of the Raynor Winn persona. She says herself that it’s easier to believe something when you believe it yourself. I believe she immersed herself so thoroughly into the Raynor Winn psyche that the whole package including gaspy speech impediment is so much easier to carry off because she could remain in character and therefore always be aware of The Script and never divert from it. Becoming the part, she was conscious and in control of what she was saying all the time.

Another interesting view! I agree that’s why she narrated her own books, to create that bond. Yes, she worked hard on the page at being your friend and even in interviews she talks gushingly of having been sent millions of letters by her readers who share their lives with her. I never had an opportunity to see her myself except just before the film came to town. She was appearing at the venue for a Q and A session on the debut night. The tickets were more expensive than the successive nights and were also sold out very quickly.

It's often used as a selling point, having the author narrate their own books. I can think of several cases where an author has narrated their book despite the fact that the author has no natural gift for speaking or reading aloud and the result is dreadful. So it's not just SalRay, sometimes publishers like to do it for Reasons, and it's not always 'close relationship between author/narrator and audience' because it's been done in the fiction market quite a lot.

I wonder if an author sometimes says 'I'll read my book for you' and it's a combination of their persistence and the publisher's desire to save on narrator costs. Narration isn't easy (I have a very lovely narrator for all my books that are on audio and I admire her ability to do all the different 'voices' immensely).

Thank you for all your informative posts, I haven't been able to listen to any of the podcasts yet. I'm still confused about the CB prize, I thought that the book entered for the prize had to be a first book, even for the first year when Raynor won, they just didn't stipulate that it couldn't be self published, so a self published first book could be entered, doesn't that mean HNTDDD would have been eligible but not TSP?

Because it played in to their bogus publishing backstory, perhaps. Much more of a marketable "rags to riches" story if she has never written anything before. Plus if they had mentioned it, they would then have to answer questions about it. Quite quickly, someone would have found the archived Gangani website, seen the ludicrous house raffle and start to pull the thread that was ultimately pulled by OC. I am not surprised they kept schtum about it.

I’m curious about the whole self-publishing system. I have googled and seen the differences between traditional publishing and self-publishing, but then I have seen that there are companies that help you to self-publish. From the lack of query all round, it appears that setting up a Private Limited Company and the owner publishing the first book his wife has written still falls under self-publishing. So, is this a normal route for self-publishers? Would it all come down to the wording of contracts etc which probably never existed for Gangani? If the boss or their partner / spouse / other half of any private publishing company had a book published by the company would that be self-publishing?

Just curious in continuing my education which has covered so many areas in these threads

Thanks for stating this clearly - so obvious but there is so much info! You are right it is for a debut author for a specific book:

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210422030236/rsliterature.org/2019/05/rsl-christopher-bland-prize-2019-winner-announced/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">RSL Christopher Bland Prize 2019 - winner announced | Royal Society of Literature

I think the thing is that the rules from 2019, which I found on archive and posted here a while back, don't specfify either way as to whether a prior self-published author was eligible or not. To find out, one would have to have contacted RSL at the time for clarity. It may well that this is why they modified the rules thereafter in order to be totally clear. But we don't know what the RSL would have said at the time in 2019..."yes, you can still enter" or "no, you are not eligible." Fast forward to 2025, and the RSL could basically choose what the rules meant at the time. My suspicion is they would much rather this issue went away quietly than have to revoke an award etc and attract potential negative PR.

‘Vanity presses’ that charged authors money to produce a certain number of print copies of their book used to be a thing. Minimal editorial input, often poor quality product, and no marketing — they don’t need to shift copies, they’ve made their money upfront.

But some famous authors self-published because it was easier than trying to get unconventional work accepted by a press — Virginia Woolf self-
published all her books but the first.

Now self-publishing almost always means doing everything yourself, and uploading your book onto Kindle, though there are still companies that will charge to do these things for you.

Gangani is a weird hybrid in that it only seems to have existed to try to make money from Pen y Maes, and HNTDDD only seems to have been ‘published’ to avoid this being a ‘house raffle’.

I can understand them not wanting any negative attention @YourMoneyforFrothingandYourChipsforFree, the information that you kindly posted previously didn't rule out self published works, but the book entered was still supposed to be the authors first, however it was published. So are the RSL just fudging that first years rules to avoid having to revoke a prize, I understand them wanting to preserve their credibility, but it's annoying that by doing so they are continuing to give Raynor Winn a status of prize winning author that she doesn't deserve.

None of the institutions, except the PSPA, want to know. It is patently clear that the prize for Raynor Winn is contrary to the whole spirit and foundation:

Christopher Bland writing prize for the over 50s | An interview with Gillian Slovo | Age UK

Yes, exactly. So they’re really in a corner now because there’s absolute proof, nothing has been ‘misleading’ at any time except from their own quarters. It does seem ridiculous to speak through a lawyer all the time.
It is a pity that she believes she deserves to have received the CB prize. A bold thing to do would be to remove that particular claim from her website, but I know she won’t do that. I wonder if her website will actually be edited to include the first book now?

So true @BrandyAndLovage, the PSPA has respect for the people that they represent, they are not going to promote charlatans. Dropping any connection to Raymoth has not harmed the PSPA, if anything it has enhanced their credibility. It would be so simple for RSL to revoke the CB prize (forget about getting the money back) in light of Salray confirming that TSP was not her first work, I would have a lot more respect for them.

I think so re: fudging. The point is, the rules aren't clear. For Joe Bloggs with any common sense, the implied meaning is what you have suggested..that the entered work must be the author's first book. The problem is, RSL have publically declared that self-published authors were not excluded. But nothing in the rules suggests that. That's why i feel RSL have backtracked to avoid a fuss and how they can because there is sufficient room for uncertainty and interpretation of the rules. To know if RSL are being upfront or not we would need to hear from someone who made an enquiry about self-published eligibility at the time.

Thank you @YourMoneyforFrothingandYourChipsforFree, it does seem like they just want to move on and this is the easiest way for them to do that, before they have to answer even more awkward questions about the book that they awarded, not being truthful and not what it appeared to be when it was judged.

Afternoon all. I hope you are well today.

Could it be that Saltim are considering republishing HNTDDD? It would be another way of making money and for minimal outlay, now that their various income streams have been cut off or reduced.

I think that this ‘confession’ is the first part of a drip feed to the Walkers coming out with the full version of the truth over the next few months and years.
They must know the game is up.
I feel very sorry for their adult kids.