The Salt Path author Raynor Winn has admitted she has ‘deep regret’ over mistakes made that led to allegations she embezzled £64,000 from a former employer.
In a bombshell statement, the best-selling writer claimed she was working during a ‘pressured time’ when errors were being made across the business.
Winn, however, denied allegations the financial dispute with ex-boss Martin Hemmings had any relation to the story told in The Salt Path.
She claimed the ‘bad investment’ with a lifetime friend that prompted the couple to lose their home related to an entirely separate legal case.
It follows days of backlash against Winn’s 2018 memoir – which has been accused of not being as ‘unflinchingly honest’ as initially billed.
Nevertheless Winn has maintained the account given The Salt Path is accurate and described the allegations against her as ‘grotesquely unfair’ and ‘misleading’.
The author, who has sold more than two million copies of her book, also said today she had been left ‘devastated’ by accusations her husband’s illness was fabricated.
Winn said: ‘The dispute with Martin Hemmings, referred to in the Observer by his wife, is not the court case in The Salt Path.
‘Nor did it result in us losing our home. Mr Hemmings is not Cooper. Mrs Hemmings is not in the book, nor is she a relative of someone who is.
‘I worked for Martin Hemmings in the years before the economic crash of 2008. For me it was a pressured time.
‘It was also a time when mistakes were being made in the business. Any mistakes I made during the years in that office, I deeply regret, and I am truly sorry.’
To combat the backlash against Moth’s illness, Raynor shared images of three clinic letters, which she claims proves he has been receiving treatment for years.
‘With Moth’s permission, and on the advice of his neurologist, I am releasing excerpts from three clinic letters, showing he is treated for CBD/S and has been for many years,’ the author wrote on her Instagram account.
‘This is deeply personal information that no-one should ever be forced to share, but we feel we have no choice in the face of this unbelievably hurtful false narrative,’ she added.
Winn has been accused of omitting key elements of her story in her account of losing her home before embarking on a trek of the South West Coast Path.
In the book, Winn said she and her husband Moth lost a fortune – and their home in Wales – due to a bad investment in a friend’s business.
But an investigation carried out by The Observer uncovered allegations she had in fact embezzled £64,000 from a former employer and was allegedly arrested.
A loan was then allegedly taken out to avoid prosecution and when this was not paid their home was sold, it has been claimed.
Moth Winn has been living with an illness for 18 years with no apparent visible symptoms that medical experts claim would require round-the-clock care within 12 years.
It has also emerged that the couple’s real names are Sally and Tim Walker and they apparently owned a property near Bordeaux in France all along.
Last night, Richard Osman said the couple could face financial repercussions if they have lied.
He said ‘a bomb would have gone off’ at the publisher after the Observer’s investigation claimed that husband’s illness and events that led to the couple losing their home were untrue or exaggerated.
Penguin Random House is the publisher of Mr Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series, which is being made into a movie series by director Steven Spielberg.
Speaking on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast with co-host Marina Hyde, he said the publisher could take legal action because Raynor and Moth Winn will have signed contracts confirming their memoirs were truthful.
He said: ‘People are going to be very, very hurt. I suggest there’ll be some legal issues if these things do turn out to be not true.
‘I think that probably you try and claw back some of the money that you’ve passed over. I don’t know this particular contract. The contract would normally be that they have guaranteed that everything, in this piece is truthful’.
Marina Hyde said that Penguin Random House could end up giving the money to build a ‘new neurology wing’ and both predicted that the creditors could be called in again for the Winns.
Richard Osman suggested that the couple may have got around £30,000 up front for The Salt Path before any profits from sales of more than two million copies worldwide.
But the film released this year starring A-listers Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs would have been worth three to four million pound, he said.
Richard added: ‘One assumes, by the way, that the cheques got sent to Tim and Sally Walker, but that’s another thing’.
Penguin Random House said today it had taken all ‘the necessary due diligence’ before releasing The Salt Path.
In a statement issued to BBC News, the publisher said: ‘Penguin (Michael Joseph) published the Salt Path in 2018 and, like many readers, we were moved and inspired by Raynor’s story and its message of hope.
‘Penguin undertook all the necessary pre-publication due diligence, including a contract with an author warranty about factual accuracy, and a legal read, as is standard with most works of non-fiction.’
It came as a healthcare charity dropped the author of The Salt Path after claims were made about her husband’s illness and an allegation that she stole £64,000 from a former employer.
PSPA said it was ‘shocked and disappointed’ about the allegations that were reported against Raynor and Moth Winn, which had ‘taken everyone by surprise’.
It was also announced yesterday that Raynor had pulled out of the upcoming Saltlines tour that would have seen her perform readings alongside the Gigspanner Big Band.
Following an investigation into their backgrounds, The Observer said that The Salt Path’s protagonists, Raynor Winn and her husband, Moth, previously went by their less flamboyant legal names, Sally and Tim Walker.
And rather than being forced out of their home in rural Wales when an investment in a childhood friend’s business went awry, as the book suggested, it is alleged that the property was repossessed after Winn stole tens of thousands of pounds from a former employer and was arrested.
When the couple failed to repay a loan taken out with a relative to repay the stolen money – agreed on terms that the police would not be further involved – they lost their home, it is claimed.
A spokeswoman for the Winns on Sunday night told the Mail that the allegations made in the Sunday newspaper were ‘highly misleading’.
Their statement added: ‘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. This is the true story of our journey.’
When asked to specify which allegations were misleading or factually inaccurate, the spokesman declined to comment further but said that the couple were taking legal advice.
Questions have also been raised about Moth’s debilitating illness, corticobasal degeneration [CBD], a rare neurological condition in the same family as Parkinson’s disease, which is central to the book.
The life expectancy for sufferers after diagnosis is around six to eight years, according to the NHS – however Moth has been living with the condition for 18 years with no apparent visible symptoms.
As part of The Observer’s investigation, a number of neurologists specialising in CBD were contacted, with one telling the newspaper that his history with the illness ‘does not pass the sniff test’.
It is suggested that anyone suffering from CBD for longer than 12 years would need round-the-clock care.
Released in 2018, The Salt Path details the Winns’ decision to embark on the South West Coast Path when they lose their home after investing a ‘substantial sum’ into a friend’s business which ultimately failed.
In the book, Winn writes: ‘We lost. Lost the case. Lost the house.’
The memoir then describes their subsequent 630-mile walk to salvation, wild camping en route and living on around £40 per week, and is described as a ‘life-affirming true story of coming to terms with grief and the healing power of the natural world.’
It prompted two sequels and the film adaptation, which was released in May, starring The X Files’ Anderson and Isaacs, who recently starred in HBO’s The White Lotus.
The Winns posed for photographs alongside the actors on the red carpet in London at the film’s premiere.