Sir,
—I read with interest Jim Fitzpatrick’s recollections of meeting Che Guevara in Kilkee in 1962 in your July/August 2008 issue. He mentioned that, according to folklore, another visit to the region saw Guevara locked into Hanratty’s pub in Limerick. A brief article, written by Arthur Quinlan, appeared in the Limerick Leader on 15 March 1965, detailing this visit. In Limerick he stayed and drank at Hanratty’s Hotel. Its residents’ bar was nicknamed the ‘Glue Pot’. While it is unknown how much drink Guevara had at the Glue Pot, Quinlan does note that by the end of the evening many of the group ‘were wearing sprigs of shamrock’. The weekend before his Irish visit, Guevara had denounced the Soviet Union for failing revolutionaries across the globe at a conference in Algiers. On his return from Shannon, he informed Castro of his intention to become a roaming revolutionary, and left for the Congo.
—Yours etc.,