Chloe Hadjimatheou

Page 94, the Private Eye podcast.

I'm Chloe Hedgeman-Though and I work for the Observer newspaper.

So what's brought me here is the true story of the true story of The Salt Path.

So this is a memoir that was sold as unflinchingly honest by Penguin, written by a woman called Raina Wynne about her and her husband who are beset by misfortune.

First, they lose their home after a close friend sort of tricks them out of it and they have it repossessed.

And then the very same week, they find out that the husband, Moth, is suffering from a terminal neurological disease.

And instead of being sort of absolutely devastated by this news, they take the quite extraordinary decision to walk the entire southwest coastal path of Britain, 630 miles.

And the memoir is the story of this walk.

And along the way...

somehow the effort of walking and of being in nature makes moth better the the symptoms of his disease reverse and at the same time reina discovers that her real home is with her husband and the love that they share and so this was a hugely hugely successful memoir

Because I got a tip off.

So a member of the public contacted me and said, I've met this couple and I think there's something fishy going on.

I think you should look into them.

Particularly, I don't think he is suffering from a terminal illness.

I think they've over egged his illness.

And so I went to my editor with this, and my editor said, I'm not sure this is a story.

It's really hard to prove whether somebody's ill or dying or not.

Why didn't you ask them?

And so the first thing I did was write to Rainer and Moth.

They weren't forthcoming.