I’ve been inside the Sistine Chapel and there’s no doubt Michelangelo had his moments. I’ve also been inside the Italian Chapel on the Orkney island of Lamb Holm and, without comparing the two, the one constructed by Italian prisoners of war during the Second World War is equally as jaw-droppingly inspirational as the one in Rome.

The Italian prisoners, 550 of them, were captured in the North Africa campaign in 1942. Two hundred of them ended up on the then unpopulated island, housed in what was called Camp 60. The prisoners were tasked to build the Churchill Barriers to the east of Scapa Flow, four causeways intended to prevent entrance to what was then Britain’s chief naval base. Scapa is one of the world’s great natural harbours –it’s sheltered, rather shallow and immense.

The causeways were built after a U-boat penetrated the anchorage and sank the battleship HMS Royal Oak, killing 833 men on board. The wreck is now a protected war grave. Churchill then ordered the barriers to be built to protect any attack again from the east.

After their day job the prisoners set about constructing the chapel from two semicircular, corrugated, end-to-end, tin Nissen huts. The materials were basically leftovers – concrete from the barriers and iron – the light holders in the chapel were made from corned beef tins and the baptismal font from the inside of a car exhaust covered in a layer of concrete. They also created a concrete facade, concealing the huts from the front and making the building look like a church.

Most of the interior decoration was by Domenico Chiocchetti, who even stayed on after the end of hostilities to finish the job. It is a monumental work of art, dedication and devotion. And it’s still used as a chapel, or will be again when the pandemic is over. It should be on everyone’s bucket list.

Court controversy

THERE are only four courtroom artists in Britain and they are all women. These sketches you see of Heather Mills tipping water over Paul McCartney’s lawyer’s head, the Lockerbie bombers, or Harold Shipman in the dock, Amy Winehouse giving a high kick demonstration to the judge, or murderer Rose West weeping in the dock, were drawn by one of either Priscilla Coleman, Siân Frances, Julia Quenzler or Elizabeth Cook.

They’re likely to be the last of the profession too, with cameras allowed more and more into court. They work with pen and ink, pastels and watercolours but the impressive thing, along with their skills, is that all of these works are produced against tight deadlines and from memory, because making an image in British courts was banned in 1925 (until last year). So, these women are feverishly churning out the portraits in the press room after the day’s proceedings, often within an hour. They are also all self-taught artists.

Drawing in court was banned following the trial of Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters, a couple accused and convicted in 1922 of murdering Thompson’s husband. As the couple were young and glamorous, they attracted an upmarket and fashionable crowd. The press reported the trial as if it was a society event, taking photographs of those attending which wound the judge up, who complained that the circus was prejudicing the trial. As a result, capturing images in court was banned.

READ MORE: Chapel of the heart: How Orkney's wartime past inspired a new novel

The present-day artists have to make notes in court as aides-memoire. Coleman, who came to the UK in the 1980s from the US, recalled: “You forget the details so you have to write something that will trigger your memory. Once I had to draw a line of airline hijackers, and they all had black hair but different hairstyles. One had long sideburns so I wrote Elvis, one was skinny so I wrote ‘skeleton man’. For others I wrote ‘potato nose’ or ‘fried hair’ or, for another, I wrote the name of an ex-boyfriend he reminded me of.” Gone to the dogs

THE New York mayoral race is under way to replace Bill de Blasio who is barred from standing for a third term, with the primaries in June and the election in November. So, of course, the wannabes have been keen to find something to get exercised about and get their names before the voters.

They had their opportunity to flap their jaws about dangerous breaches of privacy and a police state last Monday when the NYPD responded to a report of an armed man with a hostage barricaded inside an apartment.

It was an everyday incident until the first appearance of Digidog, like a creature out of Star Wars, bristling with cameras and microphones, tramping into the lobby.

The justification for using the $75,000 metal rover is that it can go into dangerous situations and feed back live pictures and sound to SWAT teams. It can probably also shoot you, but the good news is that it has no teeth so you are not in danger of getting your ankles bitten.

One art collective even mounted a paintball gun on one and controlled it from a website, shooting at targets in a gallery.

Boston Dynamics, maker of Digidog, claims the conditions of sale mean that it cannot be used to harm or intimidate people or animals.

Yeah, that’ll stop it. How long before the first Digidog shoots a black man?

Last days of gnome

WHO would have thought that the knock-on effect of that container ship, the Ever Given, blocking the Suez Canal, would lead to a shortage of garden gnomes? One garden centre manager said he hadn’t seen a gnome in six months, neither plastic, stone nor concrete. He was quite upset.

It’s a serious problem. Apparently there’s a new clientele looking for them, posher folk probably, who are snapping them up as they become available. This pandemic has done funny things to people.

And there’s been a shortage of materials coming in from the Far East and that blockage has just exacerbated the problem.

My old boss, the peerless Brian Groom, recounts that the EU used to give a gift to journalists at summits. At one summit in Ghent, the gift was an unpainted garden gnome. Not this year.

READ MORE: Chapel of the heart: How Orkney's wartime past inspired a new novel

We’ve had our Phil

AMONG the quickest off the mark to cash in on the death of Prince Philip, and among the most tasteless, was the German company Steiff, which makes teddy bears. Less than 12 hours after the death was announced Steiff was promoting the limited-edition Prince Philip Memorial Bear, “made from the finest mohair in a beautiful chestnut brown colour with black felt paw pads”.

It comes with a 22ct gold-plated medallion round the bear’s neck, engraved with an image of Phil in naval uniform and a black armband that’s embroidered with the duke’s cipher.

Not that you can get one now, they won’t be available until the autumn and production will cease a year after HRH’s death. Oh, the price? That’s £249 plus £7.50 postage and packing, of course.

The flyer advertising the bear carries a quote from the Queen and given that Philip’s image and cipher are on the toy then it must come with the approval of Buckingham Palace, also presumably taking a cut?

Understandably the palace weren’t answering such questions on Friday.

Steiff bears seem to go for aristocratic prices. A Louis Vuitton one made in 2000 and 17 inches high went for £125,000 at auction.

There wasn’t yet a Prince Philip one up for sale on eBay when I checked but you could get a Queen’s Diamond Wedding one for £1,800. If your purse doesn’t stretch to that then there’s the trio of Sooty, Sweep and Soo. At £700. Second hand.