‘I felt guilty complaining about inheriting a beautiful castle but I also resented the situation’ – ‘Death Metal baron’ Randal Plunkett on taking the reins at Dunsany

I was getting ready to leave when Daniel burst into the room. He put a hand on each side of my face and told me Dad was gone. From another room, I heard the unnerving sounds of my mother wailing. I’d heard something like that before, when farmers separated the young sheep from their mothers and days of suffering followed. I didn’t budge. I patted Daniel [half brother] on the shoulder and thanked him. I was determined not to cry. Crying was for the weak, I thought. It was indulgent. That’s what I’d been told, all those years before, when my best friend Emil’s father had died. Now I felt I’d been weak for too long and would never again show the world a single tear.