{"id":677718,"date":"2026-11-07T13:32:15","date_gmt":"2026-11-07T13:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/677718\/"},"modified":"2026-11-07T13:32:15","modified_gmt":"2026-11-07T13:32:15","slug":"sophie-toscan-du-plantiers-book-about-west-cork-is-a-small-victory-from-beyond-the-grave-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/677718\/","title":{"rendered":"Sophie Toscan du Plantier\u2019s book about west Cork is a small victory from beyond the grave \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sophie Toscan du Plantier<\/a> was murdered on the night of December 22nd-23rd, 1996, outside her holiday home in west Cork<\/a>. Thirty years later she lives on in the memory of those who loved her \u2013 her mother, Marguerite Bouniol; her son, Pierre-Louis Baudey-Vignaud; her brothers, Bertrand and St\u00e9phane; her aunt Marie-Madeleine Opalka; her uncle Jean-Pierre Gazeau, and many friends and cousins.<\/p>\n

The ferocity of Toscan du Plantier\u2019s murder, her family\u2019s fight for justice, Ireland\u2019s refusal to extradite chief suspect, Ian Bailey<\/a>, and his eventual trial and conviction in absentia in Paris in 2019 have ensured that the French woman lives on in the collective consciousness in both Ireland and France.<\/p>\n

Bailey, the English-born man who was convicted by three French judges of having murdered Toscan du Plantier, died in January 2024<\/a>. Her father, Georges Bouniol, died the following December at the age of 98. Her widower, the film producer Daniel Toscan du Plantier, died in 2003.<\/p>\n

The rest of us grew older. Toscan du Plantier alone remained immutable with her golden hair and dark eyes, smiling in the photographs.<\/p>\n

I covered the murder case from start to finish for The Irish Times. Shortly after her death, I sought out the French lawyers who represented her family. But writing about legal procedure and reactions to statements made by Bailey was repetitive and frustrating. It bothered me that his words and actions dominated news coverage. I wanted to know who she was: her thoughts, feelings and personality. I wanted to describe the person whose life had been snuffed out with such unspeakable violence.<\/p>\n

I met and interviewed her family members, starting with Marguerite. \u201cI want to talk about her, because I don\u2019t want us to forget her,\u201d she told me of her daughter. To help me write the profile that was published in The Irish Times on the third anniversary of Toscan du Plantier\u2019s death, Marguerite gave me the text of her book. On the title page, Toscan du Plantier wrote L\u2019A de la T, an abbreviation for L\u2019Amour de la Terre, as if her love for the wilds of west Cork was so personal or so intense that she dared not declare it openly. She signed the text with her maiden name, Sophie Bouniol.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Time and again, I saw the hopes of Sophie Toscan du Plantier\u2019s family crushedOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

When she was a teenager, she spent two summers in Dublin with a family who took her around Ireland in a caravan. She grew to love the country, and in the early 1990s decided to buy a house there. <\/p>\n

Among the documents Marguerite shared with me was her daughter\u2019s house-hunting diary. \u201cFind myself another country, why?\u201d she wrote. \u201cI already have one; but another, so it will be mine, so that I will conquer it, so that we will deserve one another.\u201d She was torn between two properties. \u201cWhat is my preference?\u201d she wrote, describing contrasting locations. \u201cOne in a gentler climate and landscape, and another, less beautiful, more isolated, on the cliffs and rocks, a strong, windy landscape … Difficult to choose between gentleness and violence.\u201d She reflected that \u201cperhaps my house should not be too isolated\u201d, but nonetheless chose the wilder landscape, \u201cwithout quite knowing why\u201d.<\/p>\n

Her descriptions will be familiar to those who have spent time in the Irish countryside: lambs frolicking in pastures, the bull\u2019s massive neck and low forehead, the \u201chuge, pendulous testicles\u201d hanging between his legs.<\/p>\n

She described the heavy fog that blankets west Cork: \u201cEverything stopped, even sound, noises and birdsong. It was as if the air had solidified, as if suddenly the atmosphere contained physical, palpable density. A little fog is all it takes to feel as though you are inside the clouds … You breathe in suspended water.\u201d<\/p>\n

Toscan du Plantier had often visited her mother\u2019s home region, Loz\u00e8re, in south-central France. Yet she felt her senses had been dulled by living in the city, that her stays in west Cork restored her sight, smell and hearing. \u201cI am truly in a state of bewilderment at discovering the simplest expression of a nature without artifice,\u201d she wrote. \u201cHow could I have forgotten it to such an extent? And lived without even missing it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheThe house in Schull, Co Cork, that belonged to Sophie Toscan du Plantier and the cross that marks the spot where she was found murdered. Photograph: Eric Luke \"IllustrationIllustration by Dermot Flynn for Sophie Tuscan du Plantier’s book, Love of the Land <\/p>\n

Her family likened the house she purchased at Dunmanus West, outside Schull, to a monastery where she led a simple life, going for long walks, reading and writing. She so loved the view of the lighthouse that she had her bed raised on a platform so she could see it from her pillow.<\/p>\n

Love of the Land is Sophie Toscan du Plantier\u2019s paean to the sea, sky, wind, rocks, light and colours of west Cork. It is also a premonition of her death there. The tufts of lamb\u2019s wool she picks from a fence prefigure the strands of her own hair that garda\u00ed found on the morning of December 23rd, 1996. It is hard not to see the fox she describes stalking lambs as a precursor to the man who pursued her through the brush below her house that December night.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt appears that an animal which cannot get back up risks dying within just a few hours,\u201d she wrote of a ewe whose lamb tried to revive its mother. <\/p>\n

On one of her walks, she discovered a sheep\u2019s carcass, \u201cthe whole scalp of a body\u201d lying on a pathway. \u201cHere, one dies exposed to the wind, the sea, and the earth,\u201d she wrote prophetically.<\/p>\n

\"OneOne of Dermot Flynn’s illustrations for Love of the Land, by Sophie Tuscan du Plantier <\/p>\n

Marguerite showed me the books her daughter read: Proust and Rimbaud, Brendan Behan and William Butler Yeats. When An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na<\/a> entered Toscan du Plantier\u2019s house after her murder, they found an edition of Yeats\u2019s poetry on her bed, open to a poem entitled Death. It begins, \u201cNor dread nor hope attend\/A dying animal,\u201d and ends, \u201cMan has created death.\u201d<\/p>\n

I read Toscan du Plantier\u2019s Love of the Land many times over the years and quoted it in The Irish Times, particularly during Bailey\u2019s trial for her murder. I also quoted it in an interview for the acclaimed West Cork podcast produced by Jennifer Forde and Sam Bungey. The Irish artist Dermot Flynn heard the podcast and asked me for a copy, so he could illustrate it. Marguerite had given me the text with the intention of making it public, so I shared it with him.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Ian Bailey: The English journalist found guilty in France of a notorious murder in IrelandOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

More than three years passed. I had all but forgotten having sent Love of the Land to Flynn. He contacted me again in June this year to say he had been awarded a bursary to the Centre Culturel Irlandais to work on the illustrations. He wanted me to see them. Paris was in the grip of a severe heatwave and I was not eager, but I nonetheless cycled over early one evening to see the illustrations.<\/p>\n

I was gobsmacked. Before travelling to Paris to take up the bursary, Flynn spent several days walking through the west Cork landscape which Toscan du Plantier described so eloquently. Images I had carried in my mind for 30 years took form before me, bringing Toscan du Plantier\u2019s text to life. Flynn\u2019s poetic illustrations include fuchsia and gorse, a murmuration of swallows, the view of the lighthouse from Toscan du Plantier\u2019s bed.<\/p>\n

\"SophieSophie Toscan du Plantier as a child with her brother Bertrand Bouniol. Photograph: Barry Roche <\/p>\n

The sea in his paintings is as frightening as Toscan du Plantier described it: \u201cIndeed, no one swims in it except tourists in the summer. People look at it from afar … This land is wary of the sea. Sailor\u2019s vocations are rare in these ports, perhaps because childhoods here are deeply marked by tales of shipwreck and the countless bodies lost to the deep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flynn made real her descriptions of songbirds, ewes and lambs, a bull and cows, the sinister fox who \u201cplunges [one] into his world of stealth\u201d. We see the ruins at Three Castle Head, which Toscan du Plantier described as \u201cthe last sentinels holding their ground on this western tip of Europe, facing America directly across the mists, storms and raging fury of the ocean\u201d. Marguerite told me that her daughter walked at Three Castle Head on the last afternoon of her life and was \u201cseized by an incomprehensible anguish\u201d. She arrived at the home of friends \u201cpale, out of breath, panting\u201d. They were the last to see her alive.<\/p>\n

Flynn\u2019s illustrations gave me the idea for this book. I narrated a short video of the paintings, which I sent to my dear friend Kathy Gilfillan, a director of the Lilliput Press, suggesting they might publish a bilingual edition of Love of the Land. A few days later, Kathy messaged to say that Lilliput\u2019s board had decided to publish the book posthumously, to mark the 30th anniversary of Toscan du Plantier\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Toscan du Plantier homicide trial hears of Cork \u2018haven\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Marguerite told me she regretted not having recognised her daughter\u2019s literary promise before her death. Toscan du Plantier\u2019s murderer cut short the fulfilment of that promise. Yet these 30 years later, the publication in Ireland, a country she loved, of the text she wrote about west Cork is an affirmation of Toscan du Plantier\u2019s talent, a small victory from beyond the grave.<\/p>\n

It is often said that a person dies twice; the first time when the body gives up, the second when they are no longer remembered. By publishing Sophie Toscan du Plantier\u2019s text, the Lilliput Press has ensured her memory will survive a little longer.<\/p>\n

This is the foreword to Love of the Land by Sophie Toscan du Plantier, with illustrations by Dermot Flynn, will be published by Lilliput Press on Thursday November 12th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sophie Toscan du Plantier was murdered on the night of December 22nd-23rd, 1996, outside her holiday home in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[45,93,7114,61,60,618,976,620],"class_list":["post-677718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-an-garda-siochana","tag-entertainment","tag-ian-bailey","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sophie-toscan-du-plantier","tag-weekendreview","tag-west-cork"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}