During the War, Italian prisoners of war built an enchanting chapel on Lamb Holm in the Orkney Islands
Just north of Wells, in Somerset, by the road to Midsomer Norton, you spot a most curious neoclassical monument. Perched high on a podium are Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome, suckling the she-wolf who mythically reared them. Only when you peer at them closely and spot corroding iron protruding from their partly collapsed cement do you realise they are in fact relatively new – sculpted by Italian prisoners in the Second World War. Among them was Gaetano Celestra, who created them in gratitude for the happy times he spent working on a farm in this Somerset countryside. Here, sandwiched in the midst of a dual carriageway, it is an oddly intoxicating sight. The land was owned by Mr Wilstead Wright, delighted that the Italians were so happy to be here. They had been treated so poorly in other counties that they were pleased to be thought of...
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