Stephen Brandes: Tall tales of Trotsky's visit to Co Tipperary 

Just because it might not have happened hasn't stopped the Kinsale-based artist from supposing the exiled revolutionary did really disembark in Cobh and make his way to Kilsheelan

Director of the South Tipperary Arts Centre, Helena Tobin, with artist Stephen Brandes. Picture: Eimear King 

Did the Russian-Ukrainian revolutionary Leon Trotsky ever visit Ireland? That’s the question pondered by artist Stephen Brandes in his
new exhibition, The Trotskys in Kilsheelan and Other Histories of Unreliable Origin, at South Tipperary Arts Centre in Clonmel.

In 1940, Trotsky was murdered with an ice-pick in Mexico City, where, exiled from the Soviet Union, he found refuge after a long period of displacement around Europe.