Clare Sheridan: A Sculptor in the Kremlin

Abstract

This chapter narrates the visit to Moscow of the sculptor Clare Sheridan, cousin of Winston Churchill, who caused a scandal when she accepted an invitation to the Kremlin to create busts of the Bolshevik leadership, including Lenin and Trotsky. Her account of the sittings, first published in the Times and subsequently as a book, offered a remarkable account of her sittings, notably her dealings with Trotsky. As a consequence of her visit she was rejected by British high society and accepted a role as a correspondent which took her to Ireland, where she interviewed Rory O’Connor at the Four Courts, Italy, where she was assaulted by Mussolini, and Turkey, which became one of the sites in her first, semi-autobiographical novel, Stella Defiant. The novel, subtitled ‘The Passionate History of a Modernist Woman’, narrates its protagonist’s repudiation of modernism in favour of communism, and subsequent rejection of the latter in favour of Islam.