The chapel, which still exists, was a concession after the Italians had gone on strike. It was constructed with Nissen huts and a concrete façade, and is one of the festival's venues. A concert of Italian baroque lutesongs takes place before the Madonna and Child altarpiece, painted by a prisoner from a tiny keepsake his mother had given him. The Italian ambassador, Pasquale Terracciano, makes a speech mentioning his nation's current six-month presidency of the Council of the European Union. The chapel, he says, is a commemoration of dark times and an emblem of faith, the music a language comprehensible to all in a continent of many tongues. He suggests that if the founding architects had based the European project less on coal and steel and more on culture, Europe would now be closer to its citizens. I ask him privately what he thinks of the Scottish proposal to break from the UK. "In general," he says, "we are in favour of integration, not disintegration. We are concerned with bringing people together. This, to me, is the purpose of culture."

The barriers unified the islands and I cross them on a local bus to visit Jim Fogarty, an ex-Marine and Falklands veteran who lives in isolation on South Ronaldsay. "When I first came here," he tells me, "I thought I'd gone back to the South Atlantic." The Leicester-born commando fought at the Battle of Mount Harriet in June 1982 alongside Welsh and Scots Guards, under a flag now threatening to lose one of its constituent parts. "Orkney is out of the mainstream," he says. "People here have quite strong views. Generally, most are against Scottish independence though increasingly the Yes vote is coming out, which doesn't surprise me. When it was first mooted, I was a definite No and I'm still of that opinion, but you'd expect that with my background. The Britain today is not the Britain I fought for and I'm starting to think the Scots should have a bit more control over what happens in their country. I'm not a great one for being told what to do by people in Westminster and I can understand the Scots wanting to get away. Westminster are doing a far better job for the Yes vote than the SNP."