PHILIP PARIS
HOME | BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | THE ITALIAN CHAPEL | ORKNEY'S ITALIAN CHAPEL
The Italian Chapel
In 2005 Catherine and I went on honeymoon to Orkney. On our third day we visited the little chapel that had been built by Italian prisoners of war during the Second World War. Although it was a lovely morning there was no-one else around, so we each put our money in the box at the entrance and picked up the small booklet that gives a brief history of the building.
We walked along the nave, reading our booklets and looking at the images on the walls until we caught up again at the beautiful rood screen. By this point I had quite a ‘moist eye’ and decided to do the manly thing and finish reading the booklet in the cottage we had rented. However, when I turned to Catherine, tears were streaming down her face.
I thought: ‘This is extraordinary. How can a Second World War Nissen hut, converted with bits of scrap material more than sixty years ago…how can this affect us so much that we are reduced to tears?’
Before we had even left the building I had decided to find out as much as I could about the chapel’s creation and the men who built it. That quest led me on a journey the likes of which I will never walk again. I sought out elderly men who had been POWs on Orkney. I spoke to the families of some of the key craftsmen. I contacted the granddaughter of the British commander for Camp 60, in which the chapel was built, as well as the daughter of the Italian sergeant major. They all provided a part of the chapel’s untold story and there were some amazing revelations along the way.
Telling the ‘story’ of what actually happened all those years ago became rather a passion and consumed most of my spare time for nearly four years. The result is the historical fiction The Italian Chapel.
But it doesn’t end with the publication of one book. As the son of an ex POW from Camp 60 said: ‘The chapel is a moving, never ending story’. He is right. The next generation and the one after them are forming links because of a building that their fathers and grandfathers were involved in. I know there are more moving tales about the chapel out there, and I would love to hear from anyone who has one to tell…
The Philip Paris novel "The Italian Chapel" is a story of forbidden love, lifelong friendships torn apart, despair and hope, set against the backdrop of the creation of a symbol that is known around the world. Amidst strikes, conflicts and untold hardships, the Italian prisoners of war sent to a tiny Orkney island during WW2 create a monument to the human spirit’s ability to lift itself above great adversity. One artist falls in love with a local Orkney woman and leaves a token of his love in the chapel…it is still there today, and until The Italian Chapel, no-one has ever known its true meaning.
| ‘The story of the Italian Chapel is one of the most inspiring to emerge from the Second World War and I’m delighted that Philip Paris has chosen to tell it. In these troubled times, we can all read, mark and learn, though whether we will is another matter.’ |
| Alan Plater, CBE (for services to drama) |
 |
| ‘When I read The Italian Chapel, I felt as though it had been written at that very time, when we were still in the camp, not more than 60 years later.’ |
| Coriolano ‘Gino’ Caprara, ex-POW, Orkney, WW2. |
www.blackandwhitepublishing.com/books/book.php?isbn=9781845022730