The French imagined a Europe that straddled mercantilism and social democracy, in which Brussels would sponsor industrial and infrastructure "grands projets" (Parisian Keynesians adore grands projets), arousing the jealousy of the Americans.
But then, among the cinders, we suddenly noticed the charred flesh still clinging to the straddled legs, the leering grin of the skull and the intolerable stench.
"All Rise" was reviewed by critics of both jazz and classical persuasions, who concurred that it was a rare and improbable kind of masterpiece that straddled boundaries and categories, affirming that in the polymorphous culture of the 21st century, genres matter less than quality, imagination and pleasure.
She devoted the last years of her life to trying to topple or share power with another coup leader, Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president.Benazir straddled three very different worlds.
Whether you sit astride a mass of power in Westminster or in banking, in Whitehall or in Brussels, Wycliffe's words will become ever more insistent," said the MP, who before sitting astride the Westminster power mass for nine years as a Tory bravely straddled the beast of fund management for six.
Throughout her long career as an Observer photographer, Jane Bown, who has died aged 89, produced a consistent and singular body of work that straddled many areas of photojournalism.
The first is that he straddled the two worlds of thinking and doing.
Squabbles over the river have been peaceful since 1934, when Arizona's governor dispatched troops to intimidate Californian engineers working on a dam that straddled the state line.
The chapter on the windows whose intense dark blues and reds were meant not to admit light but to spiritualise it, brings the reader closest to the strange line they straddled between the material and the immaterial.There is little, by contrast, that Mr Hollis does not know about his characters.
Given the overwhelming importance of the economy, the competence of the coalition must thus be the central plank of their strategy, leaving less room for the fine detail of differentiation from the Tories.The attacks on Labour straddled two big themes in the speech: economic competence and the evils of vested interests.
And Edison, like Mr Ovshinsky, straddled the fields of energy and information technology: he originally made his name with the invention of the quadruplex, a device that increased the capacity of telegraph lines, before moving on to electrification.Another similarity between the two inventors is that both thought of their inventions as entire systems.
