Birlinn New Title Catalogue Spring 2017

Donald S. Murray
The Italian Chapel,
Orkney
APRIL 2017
Donald S. Murray is an
author and journalist whose
poetry, prose and verse has
been shortlisted for both the
Saltire Award and Callum
Macdonald Memorial
Award. He won a Robert
Louis Stevenson Fellowship
in 2012 and a Jessie Kesson
Fellowship in 2013. His
book, The Guga Stone, was
recently nominated as one
of the Guardian Best Nature
Books of 2013. He lives and
works in Shetland.
Thousands of visitors go to the
Italian Chapel in Orkney every year,
witnesses to a series of remarkable
acts of transformation. Its builders
included a group of Italian soldiers
imprisoned in this bleak and
windswept part of Scotland. In the
course of this, they not only played a
part in changing Orkney’s way-of-life
forever but also transformed a simple
Nissen Hut, constructing through
their labours a place-of-worship that
still stands till this day a remarkable
symbol of their identity and faith.
The Italian Chapel, Orkney tells the
story of the strength and tenacity,
laughter and tears of the men who
built the Chapel, showing how spirits
defeated and despondent during years
of exile were lifted by its creation. It
does this with its own artistry and
grace, using folk-tale and myth to
provide a fitting counterpart to the
wonder and beauty of the building
that inspired it.
Format: 198 x 129mm B-pbk
ISBN: 9781780274294
Price: £9.99
Extent: 240pp
Illustrations: 24pp colour plates
April 2017
‘A beautiful book in many ways’
– New Shetlander
‘The chapel now has a book that can
match it in artistic merit’
– Shetland Times
Also available
THE GUGA HUNTERS
ISBN: 9781780273051
Price: £8.99 Paperback
Also available
SY StorY
ISBN: 9781780272603
Price: £12.99 Paperback
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