The Salt Path, a memoir about walking the UK’s costal paths following devastating life challenges, was a popular pastoral style book that swept readers away.
Personally, I never read this book, but I did check out one of the later ones from the same author called Landlines: The Remarkable Story of a Thousand-Mile Journey Across Britain, which I found interesting.
At times, I forgot the book was supposed to be non-fiction, and just enjoyed the insight it gave.
Unfortunately, you can’t overlook the fact that the core of these tales is, supposedly, a true story.
Following the release of the film version of The Salt Path recently, The Observer published a story supposedly debunking the central facts of the books and the author.
Not only is the writer named the rather ordinary Sally Walker, rather than the much more enigmatic and creative Raynor Winn, but she and her husband Moth, real name Timothy Walker, had considerably misrepresented themselves. Using a pseudonym is popular among writers, but when it appears to be done to hide a criminal past it certainly taints the author and their work.
In her books, Winn/ Walker states that she and her husband lost their home after investing in a supposed friend’s business, with the implication being that their generosity was taken advantage of.
The paper’s investigation has evidence that Winn / Walker actually stole over £64000 from her former employer, a small local estate agent in Wales. She took out a loan from a distant relative of her husband, against their house, to pay the money back and when the debt was sold on they went to court and the property was repossessed.
They still owned a property in France, which is a far cry from the destitute position that is outlined in The Salt Path. While this is said to be just a ruin, it still makes them far less imperiled than was portrayed. It also shows that they clearly wanted to show themselves to be less prosperous than they were, which I’ve noticed among of lot of very wealthy people. Poverty is only fashionable when used to make your past seem less privileged. For those actually living it, it’s pretty bleak.
Far worse, though, is the allegation, made incredibly tactfully, that calls into question Winn/ Walker’s husband diagnosis. In the books, she claims that he was diagnosed with corticobasal degeneration (CBD), and that the walking helps him to manage the pain and symptoms.
That was the part of Landlines that I didn’t like, as it always makes me feel uneasy when people claim nature and alternatives to traditional medicine can magically cure ailments. Still, I don’t know much about this disease, and was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt as I, like many others, assumed that the book had been fact-checked.
Turns out, patients with this diagnosis have a life expectancy of just 6-8 years, 10 tops, with limited mobility and quality of life towards the end. So, Moth/ Tim Winn/ Walker’s 18 years living with the disease is incredibly fishy.
So much so that the UK’s only charity for the disease has dropped any association with the book, including removing a video of Moth/ Tim Winn/ Walker from its website.
While the Observer didn’t show their proof, they have witness statements and state that this evidence is real and has been verified. The fact the the author gave no evidence to defend herself suggests that this is at least partially accurate. While there is a statement on her website, the letters shown from doctors don’t confirm a diagnosis, and there’s no actual evidence to disprove any of the financial claims beyond some well-written denials which skirt over the fact that the theft allegations appear to be true.
Every memoir has areas of exaggeration, but in this case the books appear to be based entirely on a fictionalised and sensationalised premise. The lack of candor surrounding the criminality makes the tales of grit and determination to overcome struggles far less effective.
Also, regarding the diagnosis, while there is no hard evidence regarding this, the fact that multiple specialists are uncertain shows that there’s something odd going on.
Many articles, including the Observer’s own, compare the travesty to James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, a supposed memoir about drug addition and hedonism that turned out to be almost entirely fictional.
I, however, am inclined to think of this as more akin to the Bella Gibson scandal. For those who don’t know, Bella Gibson was an Australian self-styled wellness guru who claimed to have healed terminal brain cancer with a vegan diet. She got a publishing deal for a cookbook, coincidently also through Penguin, who published Winn/ Walker’s books, and even built an app that was part of the first iteration of the Apple Watch.
Eventually, it was discovered that Bella was making it all up and running a grift. She never had any kind of cancer. Almost everything she said was entirely fabricated, and she was shown to be a pathological liar.
While we don’t know anything about Moth/ Tim Winn/ Walker’s health, it’s clear that he oversold the notion that he was cured through simple nature, and that walking could improve his condition.
I understand the notion of keeping your health confidential, but when you’re making claims in a book, publishers should at the very least get confirmation of diagnosis before publishing books that involve mention of real-life health problems.
Because as bad as it is to fake being homeless and destitute, making it seem like a cutesy, slightly stressful experience you can overcome with tenacity, rather than a desperate and deeply depressing state that changes you permanently, lying in any capacity about a diagnosis and cure is much worse.
People facing health scares are vulnerable to suggestion, and making baseless claims of health improvements can encourage them to make decisions that aren’t good for them. It can be incredibly damaging to people in similar situations, and the lies are often combined with a push to sell them something. In Gibson’s case it was her app, book and other people’s wellness retreats. The Winn/ Walkers appear to do some kind of walking/ music tours, as well as their books.
Selling these dubious wellness products often leads to a push away from traditional medicine, which can cause major health problems for followers.
Ultimately, this is a scandal not just for the writer and her husband, but also the publishing company. Clearly, regulation or guidance are needed to ensure that people aren’t misled about important topics, like health and homelessness. With AI already spreading misinformation across the Internet, publishers need to be a bastion of truth so books can remain a source of legitimate, verified information.
Just to clarify, I don’t 100% know that there is or was a grift going on here. What I can see is that there clearly was past criminality and there are discrepancies in the author’s accounts of her life, which call into question the truth of her book. It would have been better to be truly honest from the beginning, than to hold back because with success brings greater scrutiny. If parts weren’t true, a disclaimer or labelling the book fiction wouldn’t have diminished its success. Hopefully, publishers will be more cautious in the future.
