Latest news with #Hadjimatheou
The Spinoff
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
Heard about The Salt Path by Raynor Winn? Here's what to read instead
A journalist has uncovered some unsavoury truths about the 'multimillion-copy bestselling' author of The Salt Path. Here are five alternatives in the long walk genre, all by local writers. On Sunday July 6 The Observer published an investigation into author Raynor Winn, whose book The Salt Path is one of the UK's bestselling nature memoirs in recent years and has been adapted into a film starring Gillian Anderson. Chloe Hadjimatheou's story revealed that there's quite the gap between the truth as presented on the pages of Winn's memoir, and the actual truth. The Salt Path tells the story of a couple in their 50s – Moth and Raynor – who embark on a 630-mile coastal walk after Moth is diagnosed with Corticobasal Degeneration (CBD) and they lose their home in Wales because of a bad investment. The memoir, and the subsequent books that Winn has published (On Winter Hill, The Wild Silence and Landlines) have all done phenomenally well – the movie-tie-in edition released this year boasts that The Salt Path is by the 'multimillion-copy bestselling author'. Hadjimatheou's research has revealed that Raynor Winn's real name is Sally Walker and that she and her husband (Tim Walker aka Moth) had to leave their 17th Century Welsh farmhouse to go on the run after Walker's employer discovered she had embezzled an alleged 64,000 pounds. The article goes on to reveal that the Walkers then borrowed 100,000 pounds from a distant relative of Tim's to pay back Sally's employer if he agreed to a non-disclosure agreement and to not pursue any criminal case against her. The employer agreed and that part of the story ends there. However the loan from the distant relative spurred its own series of troubles resulting in 150,000 pounds outstanding and secured against the Walkers' house. Even further, Hadjimatheou discovered that the Walkers owned a property in France (The Salt Path claims they had nowhere else to go); and that they set up a publishing business that published one novel that promised purchasers an entry into a free prize draw to win the Walkers' Welsh home, 'the same property that a judge had ordered to be repossessed if they didn't sell it,' writes Hadjimatheou. The Walkers' home was eventually repossessed in 2013 and bought by Maxine Farrimond in 2016 who told Hadjimatheou 'she was shocked to receive a stream of letters addressed to Sally and Tim Walker: unpaid bills, credit cards and a speeding fine as well as letters from debt collection agencies.' Perhaps the most distressing element of the investigation is the doubt that Hadjimatheou's research throws over the veracity of Tim Walker's CBD diagnosis. While Hadjimatheou is careful to state that 'there is nothing I have seen to contradict his diagnosis or Sally Walker's account of it,' she outlines the responses of nine neurologists and researchers specialising in CBD who collectively expressed surprise at Walker's lack of acute symptoms and 'apparently ability to reverse them'. If you are now ready to divest yourself of Raynor Winn's books, here are five alternative books about walking, nature and memoir – all by Aotearoa authors. Northbound by Naomi Arnold Naomi Arnold's riveting and moving account of walking Te Araroa from the bottom on up. The Spinoff's Liv Sisson said: 'There's no rose-tinted retrospect here, and this lends the book a nice feeling of immediacy. You feel very in the moment with Arnold as she walks – it reads less like a memoir and more just like a great story. And it is a roller coaster. There are awe inspiring moments – a rainbow, delicate hoar frost, native bird song, Magellanic clouds and many stunning vistas. But there's also a lot of cold and a lot of mud. There are primal screams, injuries and a lot of swearing. Snow has begun to fall before we even reach page 100.' This book would also make a great movie, just saying. Towards Compostela: Walking the Camino de Santiago by Catharina van Bohemen A beautiful memoir of walking and questing with illustrations by Gregory O'Brien. Bohemen gets underneath the art of the long walk by noticing everything and reflecting on every bend in the road, every comedic encounter, every moment that feels like more than just a fleeting time with those you meet along the way. Adventures with Emilie by Victoria Bruce Te Araroa but with a child! Josie Shapiro wrote a tremendous article about the walking memoir on The Spinoff including this about Bruce's work: 'Bruce and her daughter find many interruptions to their trip. Covid lockdowns, weather events. Emilie almost sliding to her death. There's plenty of heart-stopping drama on a hike that goes on this long, plenty of descriptions of hungry bellies and exhaustion and frustration at putting wet socks on dry feet. Like [Cheryl] Strayed, Bruce uses the trail to map a path into the depths of her own soul, hoping that hard work, sweat, and a few tears might help guide her through.' Uprising: Walking the Southern Alps by Nic Low Low's book is essential for anyone interested in getting beneath colonial ideas of tramping and trails in Aotearoa. In this book Low follows Ngāi Tahu pathways to illuminate stories and names suppressed by the English overlays. Over on the Alpine Club, Ross Cullen says about Uprising: 'There are also chunky chapters on a solo walk up the Godley valley and avalanche ride near Sealy Pass, trips over Rurumātaiku (Whitcombe Pass), Tarahaka (Arthur's Pass), Nōti Hurunui (Harper Pass), Nōti Hinetamatea (Copland Pass) a slog up the highway to Tioripātea (Haast Pass) a successful ascent to near the summit of Aoraki, boat and foot travel carting pounamu from Fiordland to Southland (Te Rua-o-te moko Ki Murihiku), interesting insights into the lives and behaviour of Leonard Harper, his son Arthur and plenty of other Europeans lured into mountain journeys chasing fame, fortune or other reward. But what I found most thought-provoking are Low's frequent observations on current names and interpretation that ignore earlier events and placenames. He walks around Lake Coleridge noting a sign explaining how lightning struck a Macrocarpa tree on Saturday 22 January 2000, but fails to find any record of Raureka's journey or any trace of a 14th century moa hunters campsite.' Solo: Backcountry adventuring in Aotearoa New Zealand by Hazel Phillips Hazel Phillips is a brilliant storyteller and her three years of exploring the mountains (and somehow holding down a full time job at the same time) make for one heck of a memoir. Here's a chunk of the blurb: 'As she ranged from Arthur's Pass and the Kaimanawa Forest Park to the Ruahine Range and Fiordland, she had her share of danger and loneliness, but she also grew in confidence and backcountry knowledge. Her story of this solo life is an absorbing blend of adventure and humour, combined with her research into tales from the past of ambition and death in the mountains. She also casts a feminist eye over the challenges women climbers and explorers faced.'
Spectator
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Why we wanted to believe The Salt Path
Like millions of others, I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Salt Path, an account of how a penniless and homeless middle-aged couple found their souls by walking the entire length of the rugged 630-mile South West Coastal Path around the Cornish peninsula. I also enjoyed watching the recent film of the book starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs, as we all like feel-good stories about plucky people battling against the odds and winning. True, there were a few nagging doubts in my mind: if the supposedly mortally sick husband 'Moth' was really suffering from an incurable and debilitating degenerative disease, why does he appear perfectly well in the many interviews that the couple have given to promote their story; and what exactly was the nature of the vaguely described bad 'investment' that lost them their home? But I set these questions aside and just enjoyed their story. Disillusionment, however, has now come hard and fast. According to an investigation by reporter Chloe Hadjimatheou of the Observer, The Salt Path's author Raynor Winn and her husband are supposedly a pair of thieves, liars and grifters who conned the adoring public. For their part, the couple have said the Observer story is 'highly misleading'. To cut a long story short, Hadjimatheou argues that the Winns' extended hard-luck story omits some vital basic facts: yes, they lost their farm in North Wales, but they only got into financial difficulties after stealing and being forced to repay some £64,000 from Raynor's former employer, a Pwllheli estate agent called Martin Hemmings. And while Moth may well be a sick man, he is also something of a walking medical miracle. Nine doctors and expert specialists consulted by Hadjimatheou say the average lifespan of CBD patients – the rare brain disease allegedly contracted by Moth – is six to eight years from diagnosis to death, or ten if sufferers are 'lucky'. But Moth has supposedly had the illness for 18 years and is still with us – a feat unique in medical history. The chief witness spoken to by Hadjimatheou is Ros Hemmings, Martin Hemmings's widow, who says the Winns' embezzling of her husband's money 'destroyed' him before his death in 2016, as he had trusted them. While the rest of the world was lapping up The Salt Path, Ros says the book makes her 'feel sick'. And although the Winns eventually gave back the money they had stolen, a non-disclosure deal stopped Martin from speaking out. Nor is 'Winn' the couple's real name: Hadjimatheou reveals they are actually called Tim and Sally Walker. Another element left out of the book is that they supposedly owned a property in south-west France in addition to their Welsh farm, which, though derelict, they would visit and stay in a caravan on the site. A stream of unpaid bills relating to this property was sent to the new owner of the farm. At the very least, then, the Winn/Walkers have questions to answer about their story, though so far they have merely issued a bland four-line statement in response to the Observer's claims, reaffirming that The Salt Path tells their true story. Their publisher, Penguin, and the film's producers have not responded at all. Why did The Salt Path and its two sequels strike such a chord with its middle-class readers? I believe the story related in the book speaks to an atavistic English desire to chuck everything aside – possessions, money, responsibility, a fixed abode – and get out on the road again. As Philip Larkin put it in his poem 'Toads': 'Why should I let the toad work / Squat on my life? / Six days a week it soils / With its sickening poison / Just to pay a few bills! / That's out of proportion.' When researching my biography of another poet, Rupert Brooke, I found that he and a group of young friends, while walking along cliffs in the South West in 1909, had made a pact to drop their middle-aged families and careers in some 30 years' time and meet up at Basle station in 1933 to entirely remake their lives. Of course none of them kept the pact: life, and for some of them, including Rupert, death, got in their way first. Haven't we all felt a similar gypsyish need to kick over the traces and set off with a pack on our backs to rediscover the simple life? The Winns' story had a special resonance for me as I too have twice set out to walk long sections of the South West Path (honestly I have – I've got the pictures to prove it) with different walking partners in 2013 and 2018. My aching limbs and shortness of breath testified that even a person in peak physical condition finds the path a tough proposition, let alone someone with a terminal illness. Defenders of the Winn/Walkers' apparent duplicity would argue that, as we are all now living in a post-truth era, if their story isn't exactly 100 per cent accurate it is still 'their truth' and therefore authentic. But I for one, being an old romantic, identified with the Winns' heroic endeavour, so it is for me a real disappointment to discover, with a sense of weary inevitability, that they are probably just another pair of dishonest grifters making money out of our gullibility. If only their story had really been true.
The Guardian
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The week in audio: Lucky Boy; Moorgate; Thirty Eulogies; Harford: An Oral History and more
Lucky Boy (Tortoise Media)Moorgate (Radio 4/BBC Sounds)Thirty Eulogies (Radio 4/BBC Sounds)Harford: An Oral History (Dan Hooper)Lauren Laverne (Radio 6 Music/BBC Sounds) 'In that summer, it was me and her against the world. We were powerful, right?' On Tortoise Media's new four-part podcast, Lucky Boy, Gareth (not his real name) is remembering his first love. He was 14 then, bright but a 'misfit', having a secret relationship. She was 27 and a teacher. Lucky Boy is how Gareth thought of himself at the time; nearly 40 years later, he thinks the opposite. I approached this podcast, the latest season of Tortoise Investigates, with unease. Not because of the company's previous form: last autumn, Elon's Spies was a timely dig into Captain Techbro's use of private investigators and surveillance, and the one before that, Master, delved into sexual allegations against the writer Neil Gaiman, making global headlines. I worried that the subject matter – an exploration of who is allowed to be a perpetrator and a victim in our society – was tricksy. Details risked being conveyed in tantalising, titillating ways, however serious the programme's intent or tone. But in the hands of ex-BBC reporter Chloe Hadjimatheou, who went to a school near Gareth's in north London, the telling of this story, and her coverage of its ramifications, was handled with exceptional due diligence, sensitivity and power. Many moments lingered. Some were from the past, such as an incident with a pornographic magazine in a cafe full of schoolchildren, or the accounts of Gareth's mother's battles with his school (the teacher, she says, her voice breaking, 'ruined his life' – the teacher still denies all wrongdoing). Most striking, though, are moments from the present day: the testimony of an old pupil who says that it was a 'more innocent time' while acknowledging the teacher and pupil's relationship, and Hadjimatheou's chat with a group of current 14-year-old boys. The mother in me cringed when they were asked what they got up to at parties (it's slightly inappropriate), but Hadjimatheou stayed on just the right side of prurience, showing how young 14-year-olds really are (many didn't shave yet; one confessed that he still played with his Lego). The 1980s scene-setting, including a subtle, gothy-edged theme by Tom Kinsella, also played a crucial role, reminding me of situations I've discussed with other friends about how easily abuse in schools was brushed over back then. We knew, even then, what was wrong. Two excellent episodes are out now; all four if you subscribe. Period scene-setting was also a priority for two-part Radio 4 drama, Moorgate, about the notorious 1975 tube train crash (it sped into a wall, in morning rush hour, killing 43 people). Written by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, known for prime-time TV big-hitters The New Statesman and Birds of a Feather, it is the culmination of a lifetime personal project for Marks. He was a young journalist at the scene, unaware until later that his father was dead inside the train (he wrote an astonishing piece about this recently for the Guardian). Based on his extensive research into the horror, Moorgate has a distinctly old-fashioned feeling. The exposition is as heavy as its subject, and much of the dialogue is dated (I lost count of the slightly lairy men), although much of it has a link to the time, like the comment by a firefighter to a trapped woman, saying he'd take her dancing after getting her out. Hints of lives before and after the accident suggested fresher storytelling directions – I was intrigued by the interior world of young WPC Margaret Liles, but this didn't get enough time. Moorgate felt more like an exorcism, or a piece of time travel, understandable from someone with a life transformed by such a terrible disaster, rather than an attempt by Marks (and Gran) to create something new. I'll finish with three gorgeous highlights from my listening week. Thirty Eulogies was a properly affecting half-hour of radio, about haemophiliac Suresh Vaghela, who contracted HIV at 21 through infected blood. Listen to it without reading the blurb, as I did, and it takes unexpected turns, some desperately sad, others very joyful. I loved Vaghela's wife getting taken out for a night in Manchester's Canal Street by a group of gay men. 'They're the only people [with whom] I've ever been myself,' she says. Also excellent – if niche – is Harford: An Oral History, a 'surreal comedy podcast uncovering the strange and forgotten history of Haverfordwest' by radio comedy writer Dan Hooper. Delivered in his west Walian lilt, these punchy 10- to 14-minuters crackle with bible-black, absurd, twisted humour. Enjoy the tale beginning with teenagers who hang out in the local crematorium as if it's a nightclub ('it helped that the organist was an absolute legend') and another about a civic planner who approves a Happy Shopper designed to rival the Acropolis. The first two episodes made me laugh out loud many times; there are more to come. And finally, Lauren Laverne's back on 6 Music, now at mid-morning, after a break because of a cancer diagnosis. Kicking off with Sly and the Family Stone and Ezra Collective, her first link was typically breezy and bright – she truly is the perfect, groovy big sister – before adding it was wonderful to be 'back in the place that feels most like home to me'. Our homes are very happy to have her.
