When The Observer released its investigation into The Salt Path, it shocked book lovers worldwide. According to original reporting by journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou, it appeared that author Raynor Winn had lied about – or omitted – many serious aspects of her life story.
The Salt Path, released as a book in 2018 and a film starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs in 2024, details how Raynor and her husband Moth, lost their house after a friend invested their money poorly. It charts their fall into homelessness and the long walk that miraculously eased symptoms of Moth’s rare, terminal neurological disease (corticobasal degeneration or CBD). But the investigation put this whole narrative into question. It was alleged that Raynor had stolen large amounts of money from her place of work, gone into hiding, lost the house after borrowing around £100,000 from a family member, and owned land in France where she and her husband could have lived.
Experts on CBD interviewed by The Observer were highly cynical about Moth’s multiple miraculous recoveries across Raynor’s various memoirs, as well as the idea that he would have lived this long with the terminal disease.
Raynor has strongly denied the allegations against her, stating they are “highly misleading”.
“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,” she said. “This is the true story of our journey.”
Raynor also called the investigation “grotesquely unfair” and shared photographs of redacted clinic letters, addressed to her husband, that appear to show that he was “treated for CBD/S [corticobasal syndrome] and has been for many years”.
Now, Sky has released a documentary, The Salt Path Scandal, which not only recaps the saga in vivid detail but poses new questions about Raynor’s alleged myriad half-truths. Here is everything we are told by the film.
The Independent has contacted Raynor’s representatives for further comment.
The unravelling of this scandal all began with a juicy tip-off from a stranger
“My first instinct is not to trust [a tip-off],” says journalist Hadjimatheou, as she sits in front of an email she received. In the email, the sender writes that the couple had made up key pieces of information about their story, including the fact that their real names were Sally and Tim Walker, and gave the name of the village in Wales where they’d lost their house. None of that information was public. “Journalistically, my instinct is if your real name isn’t out there, what are you hiding? That was the first thing that made me think maybe there’s something in this,” Hadjimatheou continued. On screen, we see the email, which says: “If you keep digging… it will just go deeper and darker than even we can imagine.”
People written about in the book come forward for the first time to dispute events
A man called Warren Evans read Hadjimatheou’s article and reached out, wanting to talk. In the book, he is called “Grant” and is framed as a superficial, wealthy person, who only seems to offer the couple sanctuary (and a portion of lasagne) because he thinks Moth is the poet Simon Armitage. “What a bunch of crap,” Evans says about this. In the book, when the couple get to Grant’s house, Moth is greeted by three beautiful women who flutter around him, offering him a massage – but that never happened. “He never had a massage,” says Evans. “Certainly our autistic son’s childminder was not going to go and wash somebody else’s feet. No way.”
Hadjimatheou also visits a healer woman from Glastonbury who remembers Raynor and Moth attending one of her sessions, though she says the author lied about marijuana being used and that Moth did not seem as described in the book.
Raynor Winn seems to have a victim complex
“She really has a divisive ‘us and them’ mindset, in which her and Moth are really the only victims in the book,” says Hadjimatheou, having met some of the real people behind the book’s characters. “And this isn’t just with Grant, it’s with lots of the characters she meets along the Salt Path but of course the readers didn’t know any of that, and they really open their hearts to Raynor and Moth and felt very sorry for them.”
The couple’s neighbour in Cornwall figured out the scandal before The Observer did
Between 2019 and 2022, the couple lived on a farm in Cornwall where Raynor wrote her third memoir, Landlines. Unfortunately for them, they were under the casually watchful eye of neighbour and fellow author Ruth Saberton. Saberton found Moth to be extraordinarily full of life and vibrant, so she was shocked when she read Landlines. “The more I read it the worse I felt... I felt bad for not realising what was going on. But I was confused because that wasn’t what I’d seen,” says Saberton. “He seemed OK. I’ve got this cognitive dissonance between what I’m reading and what I’m seeing.” So she went back through all Raynor’s books and made copious notes about what made sense and what didn’t. Suddenly, with a “critical” eye, she realised that the truth had been glaring everyone in the face the entire time: this was obviously a work of fiction.
Even if the publishing industry is to blame for this scandal, it is unlikely to change
Why was Raynor even allowed to sell her muddy story, asks Hadjimatheou. While no one at Penguin wanted to speak to the reporter, she tracks down Amelia Fairney, who had a career at the publisher for two decades and amusingly now works for a disinformation charity. There is no formal fact-checking process for memoirs, says Fairney, but Raynor would have signed something in her author contract confirming that everything she has written is true. After The Salt Path achieved bestseller status, it would be difficult for a “lone voice” at Penguin to raise concerns about potential mistruths in the book, says Fairney, as the pressure is on to keep pumping out follow-ups.
“People do trust books... And I think it would be a huge shame to jeopardise that,” she says, of the legacy of this scandal. However, she makes the depressing point that while the publishing industry needs to look in the mirror, there is little incentive to: the scandal sent The Salt Path back to the top of the charts. “I helped,” admits Hadjimatheou.
A damning confession letter from Raynor Winn comes to light
A member of Raynor’s family comes forward with a confession letter apparently written by the author, who admits to stealing money from multiple people across her and Moth’s families and forging bank statements. “Please don’t look any further for the money. I’ve taken it. All of it,” the letter reads.
“It’s finally happening, someone knows!” Cecile, Moth’s niece, says of the moment they saw the original investigation online.
If you’re a person with a shady past, why would you write a memoir?
After uncovering all this information, Hadjimatheou still can’t understand why Raynor has done this. “Raynor Winn just suddenly seemed like a very different person. She’d taken real aspects of her story and cast them in a very different light,” Hadjimatheou says. “Maybe we all do this to some extent but when you market a memoir as unflinchingly honest, and you’re prepared to go on the sofa on The One Show and say this is the truth, then I think there is a public interest in telling the reality as very, very different.” Why didn’t she lay low with her husband in France and have a nice, normal life after getting away with her multiple alleged thefts relatively unscathed? That is the true mystery here.
Raynor has denied the allegations in the documentary, stating on her website: “Tortoise Media’s Observer and documentary makers continue to spread a false narrative about my life, despite me having addressed them in my earlier statement.
“As with most people’s lives, there will always be someone willing to criticise you, that’s part of life. However, it is a great source of sadness that Tortoise Media’s Observer and documentary makers are now seeking to drive a wedge between our family members. The family have always been able to share their concerns privately, and they still can.
“I did not steal from family, as others can confirm. Nor have I confessed to doing so and I did not write the letter suggesting I did. Moth was diagnosed with CBD, now known as CBS, which is an Atypical Parkinsonism – this is a fact. We were homeless and we lost our house because of a financial dispute with a lifelong friend, as described in the book.
“To everyone who has read and loved my books, thank you. Nothing has changed. The Salt Path remains my honest recollection of the time when we lost our house and found hope on the Coast Path.
“Except in limited cases, where names of people or details of places and events were changed to protect privacy, as explained at the front of every copy.
“Thank you to the thousands who have written offering love and support, it has meant so much to us.”
‘The Salt Path Scandal’ is on Sky Documentaries at 9pm on Monday 15 December
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