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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to think this couple in the guardian are strange and this was not an appropriate subject for a book?

221 replies

HildegardVonBingham · 07/07/2026 06:53

My jaw was on the floor as I read this. Obviously it’s awful that they were subjected to a campaign of harassment, absolutely no excuses. But I do think it’s insensitive to write a whole BOOK about it, given that the perpetrators killed themselves in a double suicide?! I also don’t know who just lends a neighbour £10k!!! Whole piece compounds my suspicion of everyone who chooses to live in the arse end of nowhere…. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/05/dream-home-turned-nightmare-in-wales-stalker-neighbours-stalked-book

OP posts:
Ormally · 07/07/2026 14:41

Press coverage of the inquest says .. the man, an ex-Para, had been diagnosed with severe psychotic depression with a history of suicidal ideation, and that his father, who was in the SAS, had died by suicide in his childhood.

(This is part of a quote upthread with back information about the person who undertook the campaign of threats and sabotaging of the land).

I put in an admiring word for Caradog Prichard (correct spelling this time) earlier. A Mabinogion alarm bell is ringing now with parts of the tale of Branwen and the Welsh figure of Efnysien. Owen Sheers' 'White Ravens' is also a beautiful read, putting these tales into a 20-21st C setting. From his version in English (so not going on the original), Efnysien is the trickster-borderline psychopath but made that way with a permanently broken mind because of brutalisation as a soldier. This is not to excuse anyone's actions or to wax lyrical with a 'See, the source of it all is Medieval, no less, this plays out again' but there is newish literature out there that, in my opinion, takes a place on the other end of the scale from the way this is presented.

HildegardVonBingham · 07/07/2026 16:03

@ChequerToRed love your fence-related insights !

OP posts:
Seajaye · 07/07/2026 19:56

Apart from the usual legal constraints around libel or official secrets etc. it seem a anyone can write a book on more or less on any topic but that doesn't mean other people have to publish it, but it or or read it. I am however astonished by what sells nowadays.

JustSawJohnny · 07/07/2026 21:40

Victims do not owe their abusers silence.

ForeverDelayedEpiphany · 07/07/2026 23:26

Having skimmed bits of it again, it does seem to have a quite peculiar, disjointed style, with some parts at odds with the way others are written.

It doesn't seem to flow that well, and in some ways, reminds me of that game called Consequences... but if everyone had written a poorly written individual paragraph of the same story.🤔😬

CamillaMcCauley · 07/07/2026 23:48

HildegardVonBingham · 07/07/2026 07:11

@LimestonePavement why would you want to re-live the trauma of that happening by writing a book about it? Obviously the man and woman who harassed them did something terrible, but I just find it weird. I also thought some of the writing had an AI tone.

In my view, a large majority of books, fiction or non-fiction, are an attempt to make sense of trauma.

Keepingthingsinteresting · 07/07/2026 23:58

User97463 · 07/07/2026 07:45

Fine not to personally like it, but bear in mind they were also defrauded out of £25k, so of they can get some of that back from a book good for them.

He should just ask the police to sell the Harley Davidson belonging to his dead neighbour that was allegedly bought with his money.

Edited

Because that’s totally how that works…..🙄

TheOccupier · 10/07/2026 07:50

Sparkletastic · 07/07/2026 07:06

It was certainly an interesting read.

Thanks for the spoiler @HildegardVonBingham

noodlezoodle · 13/07/2026 15:44

The plot thickens... the book has gone from 'published by...' to 'release date January 2027'. I wonder what happened?

wherethewaterisdarker · 13/07/2026 15:53

I agree it had a very dodgy, tacky, exploitative vibe and I was surprised it was serialised in the guardian - not least because it’s quite obviously written by generative AI.. not something I’d imagine the guardian would want to promote. The imprint it’s publishing with also looks.. not high quality and ethically rigorous! Weird but I do think the guardian is quite shit in general these days.

AlwaysExtraHot · 13/07/2026 16:08

I found it odd too, for reasons I can't quite put my finger on; there just seem to be gaps in information/logic.
I also don't quite see how you can make a whole book out of it; I felt like the whole story was told in that one extract. Unless I'm massively missing something.

BrandiedAromatics · 13/07/2026 16:17

noodlezoodle · 13/07/2026 15:44

The plot thickens... the book has gone from 'published by...' to 'release date January 2027'. I wonder what happened?

Yes, I wonder .... here is another parallel with The Salt Path author - the fourth book has been kicked into the long grass by the publisher .... easier than confronting the problem?

AlwaysExtraHot · 13/07/2026 16:46

User97463 · 07/07/2026 13:58

That's definitely plausible but the part of their story that makes no sense is that Collins showed up with a brand new Harley Davidson. The older man "ran back to the house to Google the price of the bike" which came out as £25,000 and it was clearly bought with "his money". That scene is utterly bizarre.

Was it a totally fake scene shoehorned into the memoir to elicit sympathy or generate some kind of visual dramatic moment? Surely Googling the price of motorcycle is hardly a crazy epiphany. How did he know for sure the Collins spent exactly that money on the bike rather than just pocketing it and having spent it on something else?

If Collins bought a bike then that means they didn't spend the 25K on the paddock. Surely Byrn would have interfered by then since he didn't get paid? If they did spend the 25K on the land and simply didn't pay them back, where the did money for the bike come from?? Utterly baffling plot holes

And I'm not a expert in motorcycles but I'm positive the cost of a HD can vary hugely. Just like every single car brand can vary depending on whether you buy it second hand, at what mileage, what model etc. How on earth did that older man find a model that costs exactly 25K, conveniently corresponding with the same amount he lent them to buy land?

Edited

Doesn’t he put something on social media about the bike and how the older couple are suckers/mugs ie implying heavily that he used their money for it?
But that doesn’t answer the question of how did they acquire the land if he spent the money on a bike instead.

User97463 · 13/07/2026 17:49

noodlezoodle · 13/07/2026 15:44

The plot thickens... the book has gone from 'published by...' to 'release date January 2027'. I wonder what happened?

Interesting! The blurb at the bottom of the article linking to the Guardian bookshop is also gone. That was why I assumed they promoted it so hard because they get a share from books sold through the shop. This was definitely the page which is gone now:

https://guardianbookshop.com/stalked-9780008802820

Original release date was October 27 2026 (still up on Amazon.com) but many other pages have pushed it back to Jan 28 2027. Maybe there were so many AI accusations that they had to go take a look, although that would have been obvious to any proofreader as well. HarperCollins are too big to risk getting caught in an AI scandal.

BrandiedAromatics · 13/07/2026 18:28

User97463 · 13/07/2026 17:49

Interesting! The blurb at the bottom of the article linking to the Guardian bookshop is also gone. That was why I assumed they promoted it so hard because they get a share from books sold through the shop. This was definitely the page which is gone now:

https://guardianbookshop.com/stalked-9780008802820

Original release date was October 27 2026 (still up on Amazon.com) but many other pages have pushed it back to Jan 28 2027. Maybe there were so many AI accusations that they had to go take a look, although that would have been obvious to any proofreader as well. HarperCollins are too big to risk getting caught in an AI scandal.

Edited

I remember that Harper had the publication date as 16 July 2026 when this thread was started. Curiouser and curiouser ...
ADAPTED from Stalked by Amanda Hut­ton & Richard Bur­ton (HarperE­le­ment, £10.99) to be pub­lished July 16. © Amanda Hut­ton & Richard Bur­ton 2026.

TorroFerney · 13/07/2026 18:33

Sausagenbacon · 07/07/2026 07:46

Yes. Very much Salt Path vibes.
And an odd choice for the guardian to give 2 whole pages to.

It was an article in the Times as well, but a normal article, an interview rather than a synposis

User97463 · 13/07/2026 18:38

BrandiedAromatics · 13/07/2026 18:28

I remember that Harper had the publication date as 16 July 2026 when this thread was started. Curiouser and curiouser ...
ADAPTED from Stalked by Amanda Hut­ton & Richard Bur­ton (HarperE­le­ment, £10.99) to be pub­lished July 16. © Amanda Hut­ton & Richard Bur­ton 2026.

Edited

Yes! I recall the July date on the (now gone) Guardian Bookstore page. That obviously makes sense based on their giant PR launch a few weeks back.

EDIT: How odd, the Guardian Bookstore page is now back! It was definitely 404 broken link earlier. But launch date is still gone and says Available but with no purchase link.

BrandiedAromatics · 13/07/2026 18:50

User97463 · 13/07/2026 18:38

Yes! I recall the July date on the (now gone) Guardian Bookstore page. That obviously makes sense based on their giant PR launch a few weeks back.

EDIT: How odd, the Guardian Bookstore page is now back! It was definitely 404 broken link earlier. But launch date is still gone and says Available but with no purchase link.

Edited

Yes, thanks but in product details:

Place of Publication:
London

Publication Date:

28/01/2027

Middlemarch123 · 13/07/2026 19:00

It doesn’t add up, clunky narrative, like a bad Netflix drama. I read the Guardian article, but wouldn’t want to read or pay to read the book, if it ever materialised. Like a pp said, lots of gaps. If you carefully read the article analytically, it doesn’t gel.

User97463 · 13/07/2026 19:05

Harper's own website page is pretty chaotic with January 28 and 30 October right next to each other?! Feel a bit bad for the 5 people who bought the book already (hardly impressive considering how much reach the story got)

If you click their bookstore links, some of the pages are also bizarre, with Waterstones listing the book as in stock and available to be shipped within a day: https://www.waterstones.com/book/9780008802820

Cravey · 13/07/2026 19:09

We know this couple and honestly hope the book sells well, the terror and fear they went through was horrific. Just awful.

BrandiedAromatics · 13/07/2026 19:38

Cravey · 13/07/2026 19:09

We know this couple and honestly hope the book sells well, the terror and fear they went through was horrific. Just awful.

Thanks, do you have any idea why the publisher is not going ahead, for now?

User97463 · 13/07/2026 19:43

Cravey · 13/07/2026 19:09

We know this couple and honestly hope the book sells well, the terror and fear they went through was horrific. Just awful.

That may have been true while the case was ongoing but the major problem is that the story isn't gripping because everyone knows the ending and there are no loose ends or unsolved details that raise more questions.

If the stalkers are still alive or even jailed, there is still an inherent sense of the unknown which is what drives people to consume media. And also (thankfully), neither of the two suffered any sort of physical harm aside from having a petrol bomb thrown at their driveway. That alone isn't shocking enough to sell a book.

This is the reason survivors of terrorism rarely manage to write sellable books either, particularly those who remained uninjured. Writing a book about "I was very scared when this scary thing was happening" does not convey any real emotions to a reader if we already know the source of the threat is dead. This is compounded if the crime was obscure enough that it's not a universal threat, such as a really bizarre form of stalking or an isolated act of terror.

Things like abuse, addiction, illness or relationship stalking are sellable because they are universal topics that could happen to anyone. People don't relate to getting scammed by a mentally ill neighbour because the majority may feel they would have made different decisions along the way.

It seems like a poor editorial decision to pick up such a story, especially with an extremely AI-sounding style of prose. The couple have no doubt suffered a lot however the way the story was conveyed to the public is simply not marketable as a product.

VividPinkTraybake · 13/07/2026 20:18

Victoriawould24 · 07/07/2026 07:20

I found it a very odd read, the way it was written was awful so many over the top flourishes and descriptions it really jarred with me.
It also made no sense, that the neighbour told the husband he was like a dad to him for example, it was never really conveyed that they ever liked them.

The big drama when ‘Cassie’ started the war by taking a friend over their river land felt like a non event.
It almost read like AI and I couldn’t decide if it was just terribly written or I didn’t like the people or their story.

It was very much giving The Salt Path vibes to me , trying to stir the hearts and book buying wallets of naive middle class readers shook that one of their own just trying their best had faced such misfortune.
It’ll probably be a tv drama before we know it.

I would be very interested to read an objective account that explains the other couple’s actions, motivations and demise.

I mean that sounds like a typical mumsnet post to me

User97463 · 13/07/2026 22:52

BrandiedAromatics · 13/07/2026 18:28

I remember that Harper had the publication date as 16 July 2026 when this thread was started. Curiouser and curiouser ...
ADAPTED from Stalked by Amanda Hut­ton & Richard Bur­ton (HarperE­le­ment, £10.99) to be pub­lished July 16. © Amanda Hut­ton & Richard Bur­ton 2026.

Edited

I'm far too unnecessarily invested in this now but I'm assuming that thousands of copies of books must already be in print if the original date was July 16, and all the PR started going out to national newspapers around July 7?! Another giveaway is that the Waterstones website lists the book as in stock, presumably because there are physical copies that have entered their system a few days before the official release.

The majority of paperback books are printed in the Far East and shipped in containers which takes at least 1-2 months. For HarperCollins to get the story into every single major newspaper, including a massive 2 pages in The Guardian means they were probably banking on the book to be a major bestseller and must have ordered tens if not hundreds of thousands of copies already.

So something massive must have happened for it to get pulled just a week before publication. There are warehouses full of that book sitting around right now. The delayed publication date implies they intend to do a reprint since it makes no sense otherwise. That sounds massively expensive because it means binning all the existing copies of the book and investing the same amount again.

If they discovered writing assisted by AI, is it even worth reprinting the entire stock or does it make more sense to just bin the project? Do they have so much faith in the story that they would invest 2x the original budget just for a chance of it getting optioned? Could it be possible they were fully aware that there was use of AI but assumed the public would be too stupid to notice? This in itself seems like a fascinating topic for an investigative article!! Are there any journies reading? Salt Path part two...

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