This whole Maginot Line business

Somebody asked me to explain my Maginot Line painting.  But I can't.

All I can say is that I very much enjoyed "Spies of Warsaw" on BBCAmerica these last two weeks and am sorry that the whole thing was only four hours long.  Which means it's done, although one hopes they're going to have a Season Two, given that it was well received by the critical community and by me.  A friend of mine likes it too, so that's something as well.

Most of it took place in Poland in the late 1930s.  The main spy was played by some guy named Tennant, who also plays, or has played -- it's impossible to tell -- Dr. Who.  Which is a program I've never quite been able to appreciate.  His love interest is played by Janet Mongomery whose States-side claim to television fame was playing the lead in Made In Jersey, which was cancelled after perhaps five episodes.  She was also in the movie Black Swan, but I don't remember her in that.

Anyway, even though much of it was about Hitler and Stalin gobbling up Poland, there was a fair bit about intelligence suggesting that the German blitzkrieg was going to go around the Maginot Line, rather than through it.  Which the powers that be considered inconceivable (for reasons I'm not entirely sure about).  So it's been on my mind.

At the same time I've been reading a good bit about gold lately, more particularly it's rapid and, to some, inconceivable decline, and I just put two and two together.

I painted this for a gold trader in Sweden a couple of years ago, so it's not the first time we've covered the topic ...

I'm quite fond of it, actually.