The Letters | The Walkers Ep6

**SPEAKER_1** (0:04)
The Observer.

**Raynor Winn** (0:16)
Can I ask a very, very trivial question? Why is Moth called Moth? Ah, Moth. Which is probably the question that everybody wanted to ask, but didn't, dear.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (0:28)
At the Edinburgh Book Festival back in 2021, the host Sally Magnussen veers closer to a secret than perhaps she realises at the time.

**Raynor Winn** (0:37)
Well, it's a nickname, it's an abbreviation. It's what I've always known him as, it's what his friends used to call him.

**Raynor Winn** (0:45)
What's it an abbreviation of?

**Raynor Winn** (0:47)
Well, I'm going to leave that one with you to work out.

**Raynor Winn** (0:51)
You can't say that. I can.

**SPEAKER_5** (0:54)
People are a gog.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (0:56)
I can.

**Raynor Winn** (0:57)
You just have to think about it. It's so, so simple when you think about it, but I'll leave it with you.

**Raynor Winn** (1:02)
But why, so why are you reluctant to?

**Raynor Winn** (1:04)
Because I just amuse myself, because so few people have realised what his name is, when it's so obvious.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (1:11)
In all the interviews I've listened to and read, Raynor Winn's only a couple of times been asked what seems to me a strikingly obvious question. Unusual names, Raynor and Moth, surely they're not their given names? And if not, what are their real names? But as soon as anyone's asked about this, Raynor's always shut the question down.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:33)
Surely Moth isn't his real name, Moth, as in Moth, M-O-T-H.

**Raynor Winn** (1:38)
It's what most of his teenage friends have always called him, so, Moth-y-in.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:43)
What's his real name?

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (1:44)
Here she is being asked on an Australian podcast, Conversations with Cornsey, and again, she refuses to answer.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:51)
Is it a secret?

**Raynor Winn** (1:52)
Well, it's, that's an abbreviation of his real name, so, you know, it's what we've always known of us, so that's who he is to us.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:00)
Raynor, now don't, you can't, you have to tell us his real name.

**Raynor Winn** (2:04)
No, I don't.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:06)
Yes, you do.

**SPEAKER_6** (2:07)
I'll leave that one with you.

**James Urquhart** (2:08)
I'll leave that one with you.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:11)
What can that be short for? Moth. Moth.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (2:14)
Who knows?

**Raynor Winn** (2:17)
Anyway, it was great to see Jason on the screen.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (2:22)
Because right up until I published my initial revelations, her and her husband's real names weren't anywhere in the public domain. Had she put their names out there, then the people she still owed money to would have caught up with her, as they did after my initial article was published. At the end of last year, Raynor was forced to pay back 150,000 pounds, capital plus interest, owed in order to get out of criminal charges brought against her by her former employer back in Wales in 2008
Sally Walker's pen names being constructed from her mother's maiden name, Raynor, and her own maiden name, Winn. Moth, it seems, is the middle letters of his real name, Timothy, and like Madonna or Prince, Moth comes without a surname. Raynor and Moth, she claims, are nicknames that they and their friends have always used for each other. But I haven't been able to find anyone who's ever heard them call each other that. And on the wall in their old house is that inscription in the plasterwork, Tim Hart's south.

**SPEAKER_8** (3:30)
I've got to stick my neck out and go, everything is wrong. All of this is a lie. This isn't the person she depicts sat on the one show sofa. You know, she sold three, four books and a movie on the back of lies.

**Chloe Hadjimatheou** (3:47)
For weeks, I'd been trying to speak to Raynor Winn's niece. I'm calling her Anne because, like Cecile, Tim's niece, Anne's worried about being hounded by the media. Raynor Winn and Moth will know who she is, and so it's taken a lot of courage for her to come forward. Anne knows there are literary agents and publishers and film producers, all of whom have made a lot of money from Raynor Winn's story. Which is why, when Anne first agreed to meet me, it all felt very deep throat.

**SPEAKER_8** (4:18)
There's always that overtones and elements of fear of recrimination and I don't know what they could do.

**James Urquhart** (4:24)
How were you feeling the day that you came to meet me at the Motorway Service Station?

**SPEAKER_8** (4:28)
Terrified. I needed someone to find me who I trusted enough to speak to. And if just someone had rocked up on the front door, would I have spoken to them? No, I probably wouldn't have done. But you know, you've kind of had to prove that we can trust you. And I know you found me very late on within all of this, but I hope I can only add weight to the fact that all these people who've said it's lies and this is what they've done, I can only try and back that up.