Che inherited some of the features of our restless ancestors.

"There was something in his nature which drew him to distant wanderings, dangerous adventures and new ideas."

Che's great grandfather, Patrick Lynch from Galway, left Ireland in the 1740s, travelling to Spain and later Buenos Aires where he succeeded in business and married a wealthy heiress.

There are unsubstantiated accounts of relatives in west Clare and of Che and his mother visiting the county when he was a child. There are similar stories of family in Cork. In 2002, Che's daughter Aleida visited Ireland as part of an official Cuban delegation.

In the late 1950s, Che told actress Maureen O'Hara about his Irish roots.

O'Hara, who was filming 'Our Man in Havana' in Cuba, recalled Che every evening visiting the hotel where the cast was staying and chatting about Ireland. She recalled that he always wore a beret "like the rebels used to wear in Ireland".

There are three reports of Che in Ireland during flight stopovers in the 1960s. In March 1965, he stayed at Hanratty's Hotel on Glentworth Street in Limerick after his flight from Prague to Havana had developed mechanical problems and stopped at Shannon. St Patrick's Day was approaching and Che and his comrades were keen to sample Irish hospitality. The 'Limerick Leader' reported they returned to the hotel "in very good form that evening, wearing sprigs of shamrock in their lapels".

In a letter to his father, Che writes of a stopover in Dublin the previous year:

"The television [station] came to ask me about the Lynch genealogy but, in case they were horse thieves or something like that, I didn't say much."

In 1962, a 16-year-old hotel barman in Kilkee, Co Clare, Jim Fitzpatrick, served Che a whiskey. "He had a great admiration for the fact we were the first country to shake off the shackles of empire, to start bringing down the British empire, which was the biggest empire in the world, " Fitzpatrick recounted.

Fitzpatrick, who later became an artist and is best known for his Thin Lizzy album covers, idolised Che and designed some of the earliest Che posters. Ireland did not react positively.

"Every shop that stocked the poster was threatened or harassed, " Fitzpatrick said.

"In Brown Thomas of Grafton Street, a well-turned out lady bought the entire stock, tore them all to pieces and walked out."

He recalled the two women who ran Parsons bookshop on Baggot Street bridge proudly hanging the poster in the window and refusing to take it down despite threats to destroy their property.