Plunkett's developing love story with Dunsany

Memoir on work rewilding family estate

When Randal Plunkett was asked to write a book about his life and work rewilding at Dunsany Castle, he thought “I can't write a book – I'm not even 50 yet!”

“I was just about 40, and thought it a very pretentious thing to do,” he told the gathering at the launch of his book, 'Wild Thing', in Dubray Books on Grafton Street, Dublin.

But the publishers, Bonnier Books, convinced him, and the project opened his eyes to “how I am so blessed at so many levels”.

“I think we forget how blessed we are, and sometimes you lose sight of the the thing on front of you and having gone back, and gone through so many things for this book, it reminded me of how lucky I am and how much work we really do have to do.

“Because it's not about the privilege – although privilege is a major part of it. It's about what we should be doing, about how we should be looking at things, and it's about finding happiness in the things we've lost touch with. This is a story about someone who did not engage, who spent most of my teenage life in a darkened room – not because of living in a castle and it's dark anyway – but to find a solitude and to find a friendship with something that was always there and that you resisted, and then you find love. He continued: "This is a love story about finding nature and finding the place that my parents always wanted me to find love for, and then trying to do something with it that means something in 2025, because privilege, castles, all that is all nonsense. But when you have some opportunities to do something valuable for beyond yourself, now that's real privilege. And so I feel like I must be the most privileged person in this country,” Plunkett concluded.

Dunsany wasn't always the happiest of places for the 21st Baron Dunsany, who doesn't style himself as such on a day-to-day basis. Born in New York and brought up in New York and London, his early years at the castle saw a poor relationship between his parents and his grandfather and step grandmother; his father, Eddie Plunkett's long battle with progressive supranuclear palsy, PSP, like Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis; and his mother's death from Covid, all detailed in 'Wild Thing'. His student life, film work, and marriage to Laura Dillon from Mullingar also feature, alongside his rewilding project of the last decade inside the estate walls, after his promise to his dying father to look after Dunsany.