ABSTRACT
The Italian Chapel, an ornate Roman Catholic chapel saved from scrap after the war is now, unlike the many bunkers, lovingly maintained by local Orkney craftspersons. The HMS Royal Oak and the Italian prisoner of war (POW) stories form a large portion of the commemorative culture of Orkney. Interest in preserving Orkney's WWII sites is just beginning to peak, whereas the Italian POW connection has been well maintained and nurtured by the Orkney community. Over the last fifteen years, there has been an upsurge in interest in commemorating WWII across Britain, which has led to the erection of hundreds of plaques, monuments, obelisks and other sites of memory. Though the POW experience and the Royal Oak tragedy are tangential to Britain's finest-hour war narrative, they have been appropriated by Orcadians in order to show off the islands' own unique heritage and sense of difference.
