Review
Books
Comedy
Culture
Trauma
5 min read

Miranda Hart's diagnosis of the unseen

Beyond a medical illness she's on to something supernatural.

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

On a TV chat show, guests look to one of their own talking to the audience.
Mirnada regales a chat show.

There I was, standing in the book aisle with a choice before me. One that would dictate my mental state for the week ahead: I could pick up Boris Johnson’s hotly anticipated autobiography (although, at £30, it would mean putting the bottle of wine in my basket back on the shelf) or I could choose Miranda Hart’s latest literary offering.  

Externally, all seemed calm. Internally, an almighty battle of the books was raging within me. The price of Boris’ ruled out the option of buying both. So, which should I pick? Whose voice should I invite to live inside my brain for the next five days? Both books were offering me a cultural bandwagon to hop on, I just had to decide which wagon looked like the better option.  

Boris… Miranda… Boris… Miranda… Boris… Miranda…  

After some intense deliberation, I popped BoJo’s memoir back on the shelf and became the proud owner of Miranda Hart’s new book. And I must admit, after hearing from friends who chose Boris to be the victor of their own battle of the books, I am very happy with my decision.  

Miranda Hart, the deeply beloved comic actor, sit-com writer, and stand-up comedian, hasn’t been entirely honest with us. For decades, she has been suffering with what she now knows to be Lyme Disease. In her book, she draws back the curtain and reveals a lifetime worth of suffering with illness after illness – bronchitis, tonsillitis, pericarditis, gastroenteritis, labyrinthitis – as Miranda succinctly puts it, ‘too many itises’. Despite illness being her body’s default state, Miranda kept calm(ish) and kept on. That is, until around a decade ago when her symptoms became simply unbearable.  

She tells the story of collapsing onto her living room floor, extreme fatigue rendering her utterly unable to pick herself up. This was the beginning of months of being bedbound and years of having to press pause on her life. Miranda recalls how she wept with relief at being able to crawl to the bathroom, of how she had to watch the television with sunglasses on because of neurological symptoms, and how she would ‘look at a cup of tea on the table and wonder if I had the strength to take a sip’.  She also paints a terrifying picture of not being believed - of living with an illness that nobody can understand, of suffering with symptoms that have no explanation. Miranda contracted Lyme Disease when she was fourteen, and had it diagnosed when she was in her forties.  

It seems that Miranda Hart is trusting that all that she can see is not all that there is – that her suffering is not the truest thing about her and that she doesn’t need to be the source of all of her healing. 

For those with no experience of living with a chronic illness, Miranda’s honesty will open your eyes to the pain and frustration that comes with your body not allowing you to live the life you crave. If you do have experience of chronic illness, this book will make you feel seen. 

But, alas, this is Miranda Hart we’re talking about. If you’re looking for a woe-is-me book, this isn’t it (maybe you’d have more luck trying Boris?). This book is brimming with:  

A) End-of-chapter dance breaks 

B) Jokes about wind (obviously)  

C) Theology 

I kid you not.  

Each of her chapters outline a ‘treasure’ that she has found in the depth of her suffering, the ‘watchwords’ that she uses to encapsulate these treasures are: love, faithfulness, peace, self-control, kindness, goodness, joy, gentleness and patience.  

I got to chapter four of the book and had myself a real – ‘hang on a minute…’ - moment. As a Christian, I’ve grown up with another way of grouping those words together: I call them ‘the fruits of the Spirit’. 

By chapter five I was convinced: Miranda Hart has released a spiritual book.  

She has, quite excellently, trojan-horsed a bunch of Bible into the Sunday Times best-seller’s chart. And nobody seems to have noticed, I almost feel a little guilty for outing her. All the book reviews I’ve read note the hard-won warmth and wisdom included in this book (both of which are there, by the way) and conclude that it is a truly lovely self-help manual. And that’s where they’re wrong.  

This is precisely not self-help.  

In fact, I get the subtle sense that the self-help industry is one that irks Miranda a little bit, and understandably so – the idea that we can ice-bath ourselves into wellness must sound odd to someone who can’t pick themselves up off their living room floor. So, I’ll say it again: self-help is not what this book is.  

Instead, it seems that Miranda Hart is trusting that all that she can see is not all that there is – that her suffering is not the truest thing about her and that she doesn’t need to be the source of all of her healing. She mentions, again and again, that the truest thing about her (and us, her 'Dear Reader Chums') is that she, and we, are loved. Deeply, unconditionally, unshakably loved. We haven’t earnt it and therefore can’t lose it. In her darkest moments, she had lost everything – her career, her social life, her home, her hopes and dreams - but she never lost that love. Everything else she has to say in the book flows from that belief.  

I happen to think she’s dead right – but that is, undeniably, a faith statement. This book is built upon them.  

And listen, you could read this lovely book – giggle and weep your way through it – without ever sensing anything supernatural within it. But, make no mistake, there is the supernatural within it. 

What Miranda has affectionately called her ‘treasures’ and the Bible calls ‘the fruits of the Spirit’ are just that; they’re what grow when one lives a life informed by and infused with God’s spirit. They’re the tangible symptoms of putting yourself in God’s presence, of keeping company with him. They are him rubbing off on us.  

What I’m trying to get at is this: these ‘fruits’, they’re seen in us, but they’re all God. They’re not the fruits of the self and so the way to obtain them cannot be self-help.  

Miranda obviously appreciates that belief in any divine/supernatural/transcendent thing can be complex, that the notion of ‘god’ can come with baggage, and religion can be an all-out no-no. And so, she is incredibly subtle with what she has to say. This book is not self-help, but it’s not evangelism either. She uses her beloved ‘ists’ (phycologists, neurologists, sociologists etc.) to unpack the ‘treasures’/’fruits’, showing how recent research and ancient religion have many of the same things to say.  

And listen, you could read this lovely book – giggle and weep your way through it – without ever sensing anything supernatural within it. But, make no mistake, there is the supernatural within it. From the opening page to the closing one, God’s there, hidden in plain sight.  

I really am unspeakably glad I didn’t pick Boris.  

Article
Books
Culture
Morality
Sin
7 min read

After the Salt Path revelations I’m liking it even more

We edit our own reality by the stories we tell ourselves

Roger is a Baptist minister, author and Senior Research Fellow at Spurgeon’s College in London. 

A newspaper front page shows its title and a falling sea bird
How The Observer broke the story.

The Observer held nothing back in its exposé headline:

“The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were spun from lies, deceit and desperation”

The truth behind the summer’s feel-good movie and the reputation of author Raynor Winn lie in tatters, shredded by the revelations unearthed by relentless investigative journalism.

The uplifting story of how a couple face financial ruin, homelessness and a terminal illness by walking the South West Coast Path has been an inspiration for many who’ve either read the book or seen the film, or both. The story works because it reflects back to us the life we know, the lives we live. And when you add the seaside of Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and Dorset, what’s not to love?

But now it needs to be seen in an altogether different light.

The article beneath the headline was thoroughly researched, carefully constructed and uncompromising in the allegations implied by the discoveries, observations and commentary of its narrative.

“… not her real name”

“… she was a thief … embezzled the money”

“… arrested and interviewed by the police”

“… five county court judgements”

“… they owned land in France”

“… nine neurologists … were sceptical”

Point by point the back story of the Salt Path is pulled apart.

First, Raynor and Moth Winn are not the “real”, “legal” names of Sally and Tim Walker.

Second, The Observer uncovered that the couple had money troubles for reasons other than the failed business investment they had claimed. Rather, as a part-time bookkeeper for an estate agent and property surveyor, Sally was accused of syphoning off £64,000 from the company’s accounts. Concerning which, it was reported that she was arrested and interviewed by the police.

Third, it was mounting debts from settling the matter with her former employer, alongside other debts, that actually led to the repossession of their home and their resulting homelessness. Not the failed business venture.

Fourth, they weren’t actually homeless as they owned a property in France, near Bordeaux. While it was in a state of disrepair and not habitable, they had previously stayed on site in a caravan.

And then finally, in a revelation that undermined the very heart of the story of their journey together, medical experts observed that it was extremely doubtful that Moth had suffered from corticobasal degeneration (CBD) for 18 years. The journalist had consulted nine neurologists, and this was the reported consensus. Not only were Moth’s presenting symptoms not what were expected, the normal life expectancy with the condition was tragically short at six to eight years.

Pulling the various strands of its investigation together The Observer thumps the tub about the importance of ‘truth’. It is not acceptable to be mis-sold an idea of truth where important passages of the book are invented. There are both “… sins of omission and commission”:

“The story, no doubt, has elements of truth, but it also misrepresents who they were, how they started out on their journey and the financial circumstances that provided the backdrop.”

However, life is complicated and there are always two sides to a story.

In a response posted to her website Raynor Winn answers each of the accusations in turn. Amid the storm of vitriol and threat unleashed online by the article, she protests that, “… [it] is grotesquely unfair, highly misleading and seeks to systematically pick apart my life.”

Most distressing has been how Moth has been traumatised by the suggestion his diagnosis was made up. Along with her online statement Winn has posted appropriately redacted letters from the neurologists treating Moth that confirm his diagnosis and the narrative of the book.

As for the charges of embezzlement, she does concede that there were difficulties with a former employer. Allegations were made to the police, and she was questioned about them. However, no charges were brought, and a settlement was reached that included her paying back money on a “non-admissions basis”.

“Any mistakes I made during the years in that office, I deeply regret, and I am truly sorry.” Raynor Winn

This, however, was not the failed business deal that lay behind their financial difficulties and which triggered their homelessness and the Salt Path story.

Winn reports that the property in France is an “uninhabitable ruin in a bramble patch” with its own, unrelated, back story. When they did explore selling it at the height of their difficulties, a local French agent valued it as virtually worthless and saw marketing it as pointless.

Ultimately, they chose not to declare themselves bankrupt and simply wipe out their debts. Rather, they made an agreement with their creditors for minimal repayments. The success of the book has enabled all their debts to be cleared.

Which leaves the implicit accusation of not being who they said they were, of hiding behind pseudonyms and not owning their “real”, “legal” names. She explains that the reasons Sally Ann and Tim Walker are Raynor and Moth Winn is really quite straightforward.

In the early years of their relationship she told Moth how much she disliked being called Sally Ann and would have preferred the family name, Raynor. Moth called her Ray from that point on. Winn is her maiden name. As for Moth, well his name is Timothy, get it? Friends and family use the names interchangeably, Sal/Ray, Tim/Moth.

Having read the book and seen the film earlier this summer I was particularly taken with The Salt Path. The humanity of their story, the journey they’d been on and the insights to a life well-lived that it offered.

Goodness, which one of us has never made a mistake, a bad call, or a wrong choice, “through weakness, through ignorance or through our own deliberate fault”?

When The Observer’s bombshell broke my heart fell. Moral high horses were being mounted and outrage expressed. Raynor Winn was being cancelled, literally cancelled.

She pulled out of her forthcoming Saltlines tour, which would have seen her perform readings from her books alongside the music of the Gigspanner Big Band during a string of UK dates. There were also calls for Penguin to cancel her next book, On Winter Hill, set for publication in October.

But do you know what? On reflection, after the revelations about the Salt Path story I’m liking it even more. And for exactly the same reasons I liked it before. Because it reflects back to us the life we know, the lives we live.

For a start, life is messy. Sometimes it’s even murky, full of misunderstanding, misinterpretation and constructed narratives. Goodness, which one of us has never made a mistake, a bad call, or a wrong choice, “through weakness, through ignorance or through our own deliberate fault”? Skeletons and cupboards come to mind.

Then, on the back of that, we all fashion the story of our lives. Whether it’s curating our online presence with the images we post to social media, or the anecdotes we share and the face we present to those who are part of our day-to-day lives. The pull is always towards a version that shows us in the best light.

In fact, it can even go right down to the stories we tell about ourselves, to ourselves. The interpretation of what has happened to us and why. Interpreting how much of our experience is down to what has been done to us or is the fruit of our own responsibility.

Now, I may not want to go as far as University of Sussex Professor of Neuroscience, Anil Seth, whose books, articles and Ted Talks see us living in a kind of ‘controlled hallucination’. An interpreted version of reality constructed and calibrated by our brains out of our experience. But there is no doubt in my mind that we edit our own version of reality by the stories we tell ourselves and each other.

This is how things are. This is what it means to be human. Some bits are edited in, others edited out. Some experiences we can interpret in one way, while others might view them very differently from where they stand.

When we feel the temptation to write someone off because of what they’ve done we do well to reflect on our own experience. Then we may well be grateful that we haven’t been cancelled because of our past indiscretions.  As the old saying goes, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

I’m reminded of how Jesus handled himself is such circumstances. When a self-righteous crowd were swiftly wanting to rush to judgement on a woman’s flawed sexual choices, Jesus encouraged those who were without fault to be the first to act. Slowly they all realised what he was saying and backeddown.

For myself, I have always found the prayer of confession to be profoundly helpful. It keeps us grounded in the reality of our own experience and should caution us about cancelling others and writing them off.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father,

we have sinned against you

and against our neighbour

in thought and word and deed,

through negligence, through weakness,

through our own deliberate fault.

We are truly sorry

and repent of all our sins.

For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,

who died for us,

forgive us all that is past

and grant that we may serve you in newness of life

to the glory of your name.

Amen.

For our skeletons there is forgiveness.

For what lies ahead, we have the possibilities of starting over.

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