Example sentences of "[pron] had been reading " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | On the boat , I had been reading about the shooting of Fergal Caraher at the South Armagh checkpoint at Cullyhanna and now , in the darkness , as details of the story flooded back , I decided against pressing the buzzer . |
| 2 | During my travels round Ireland , I had been reading Sleeman 's Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Magistrate . |
| 3 | I had been reading in Shelvocke 's Voyages , a day or two before , that , while doubling Cape Horn , they frequently saw albatrosses in that latitude , the largest sort of sea-fowl … |
| 4 | He said , ‘ Do have a look at the price of some of the things in here , there 's even a knitting machine ’ and there for all to see was an Erka Twinbed Knitting Machine with carrying case and stand for 45 guineas , the very thing Grace Worrell had been asking about in the letter I had been reading only a few seconds before . |
| 5 | I had been reading Tales from the Iliad . |
| 6 | For years , I had been reading and re-reading his novels , ever since I had come across Prester John at my prep school . |
| 7 | Somebody had been reading a paper there , which apparently happened quite often , Penelope learned , and they usually finished at about this time . |
| 8 | Susan laid down the paper she had been reading , and with one gloved hand made a little peep-hole on the steamy window of the railway carriage . |
| 9 | For instance when in a dream she was conducted by me over a market garden in Aegina , one could guess that she had been reading Angus Wilson 's The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot , in which a market garden figures ; or when I dreamed of a detective novel by her , with a detective bearing her own name and very uncharacteristically dressed there were signs of my addiction to the detective novels of Gladys Mitchell . |
| 10 | ‘ She had been reading her stars on a daily basis like everybody does . |
| 11 | After a bit , he took off his debonair jacket and lay back on the bed in a beautiful fluted shirt , much creased , holding her newspaper over his head to look at the article she had been reading . |
| 12 | It was a phrase from the very page she had been reading . |
| 13 | Gina went down the stairs feeling as if she had been reading someone 's letters , or had been forced to eavesdrop on a conversation she did n't want to hear . |
| 14 | ‘ The hills of Sintra mean that even in the height of summer the town has a freshness , which is why the rich people used to build their country houses here to escape the heat of Lisbon , ’ Ashley said , resolutely switching her thoughts away from her host and to a guide book which she had been reading . |
| 15 | She had been reading a lot of self-help books and this was her conclusion . |
| 16 | She wondered who had been reading so recently on the carefully made bed , or if this fat book , which she now saw to be a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories , were a relic of the past summer , and the maid , or whoever cleared the house , was devotedly keeping her employer 's place . |
| 17 | Hugh , who had been reading about the dangers of having a smoker as a cohabitee , waved his handkerchief through the air and moved to the edge of the terrace . |
| 18 | ‘ And presumably , ’ said Julia , who had been reading the backlog of newspapers that had accumulated during her illness , ‘ the appalling winter will have done for this year 's as well . ’ |
| 19 | ‘ And pears , ’ interjected Gwendolen , who had been reading her guide books . |
| 20 | At this point the young man , who had been reading a folded newspaper , looked up and said in a slightly truculent voice , ‘ Excuse me , madam , but that 's my pudding you 're about to eat . ’ |
| 21 | Grandad , who had been reading his paper , said , ‘ Eh , I 'd like to help with the cleaning but you see I promised Angus up at the farm that I 'd help him with the lambs today . ’ |
| 22 | We had been reading the poems of a Greek poet in French translation together . |
| 23 | Peregrine switched the wireless off , imitating the stilted tones of whoever had been reading the news . |
| 24 | Eliot , though , is determined , like the anthropological writers he had been reading , to make plain the root of the custom , which he does in the next line , ‘ And flowers of deflowered maids ’ . |
| 25 | Like most defectors , Lyalin was suffering from delusions of grandeur and it was hard to judge whether he had been reading too much of Pincher 's material or books by Le Queux dating from the turn of the century . |
| 26 | Kegan looked up from the paper he had been reading and looked a little hopefully at the faces in front of him . |
| 27 | The story of a man compelled to search for a pure virgin , read one evening while his mother was mending stockings , left him ‘ haunted by spectres ’ whenever he was in the dark ; other stories drew him out to the churchyard , where , with his imagination overflowing , he would race up and down through the great avenue of elm trees , and act out among the docks , nettles and rank grass whatever he had been reading . |
| 28 | His foot touched the book he had been reading before he had fallen asleep . |
| 29 | Nahum was about to close the ledger when his attention was caught by the entry above the one he had been reading . |
| 30 | He had been reading some fine sentiments in a little book of Carlyle 's , his Heroes and Hero-Worship . |