But the dragonarmy soldiers were seeing something that opened their eyes to a new and startling reality.

The next painting lurches you forward 60 years, into our century, and into the startling reality of Freud's mature art.

The documentary A Place Called Chiapas shows the startling reality of what is like to live in contemporary Chiapas, a relatively quiet war zone.

But it is there, on the landscape, a startling and imposing reality.

One of the most startling realities is that one-third of the families in New Jersey are in some way aversely affected by alcoholism or drug abuse.

The story is funny precisely because it points to an antiquated anxiety, a fear from another era running up against the startling reality of this one.

What isn't being conveyed is the less startling everyday reality underneath.

The startling reality of Orel Hershiser's 59 consecutive scoreless innings has made him, at the start, the central figure of the series.

Their age could have been an insurmountable obstacle, but for the two determined teenagers, it proved the opposite - a startling reality that earned them a serious hearing.

The startling reality, that the Invaders were machines pursuing some kind of twisted parody of Darwinian evolution, had not yet sunk in.