Although I have a degree in Modern History

I know very little about Trotsky. But one fact that everyone knows is that he was murdered, by one of Stalin's agents, with an ice axe in the head. Ridiculously, I had mentally devised a story to explain the ice axe detail. My scenario had Trotsky as a keen amateur mountaineer, wearing his hobnail boots, tweed plus fours and knitted hat, negotiating the very top of a little known peak in Mexico when a Dick Dastardly figure climbed up behind him, wrenched the ice axe out of Trotsky's hand, and smashed it in his head. I thought that Trotsky died instantly and that his trusty friends had to stretcher him down the mountain.

The truth was nothing like that. A man who had sneakily befriended other members of Trotsky's circle over a number of years pestered him for some help with an essay he was writing. Trotsky seems to have been an obliging friend. They went into Trotsky's study (in a specially fortified house in Mexico City) but the enemy had hidden an ice axe in his raincoat, and while Trotsky concentrated his attention on the useless essay, the enemy used it. There was much blood. Trotsky did not die immediately. He gave instructions that his grandson, just home from school, should not see the bloody injury.

Trotsky's death remembered A first-hand account from the Guardian.

The behaviour of the US government at that time was incredible. They considered any open revolutionary, like Trotsky, better dead, and the press almost danced on his grave. This was in 1940. After the US joined the war, Joseph Stalin got a complete whitewash by the US press. It happened so quickly. Only in the pages of 1984 (Orwell) has this been truly noted. Meanwhile, any innocent US resident of Japanese, German or Italian nationality could expect to be reviled, harshly treated or imprisoned.

Stalin not only cheated Trotsky out of a place in Soviet Russia, he also made him an exile and killed nearly all of his family - the grandson being the last survivor. How the exile continued to exude enthusiasm for the workers' revolution is a mystery. He lived in constant fear, surrounded by bodyguards.

I am still reading The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver and have checked several Internet pages to find out where the book and the facts part company. All so interesting. A brilliant book.