Example sentences of "had been [v-ing] [prep] the [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | In 1962 H. H. Hess , of Princeton University in the USA , published a radical explanation for much of the geological data that had been accumulating over the previous decade or so . |
| 2 | Her husband had been serving in the British Merchant Navy on the Russian Convoy run but after 1943 he was receiving psychiatric treatment in Shropshire somewhere for his nerves . |
| 3 | Then Andy took his wedge , which he had been swinging for the last ten minutes , and hit the perfect , or apparently perfect shot , straight at the flag . |
| 4 | The report focused on a United States pharmaceutical company , Velsicol Chemical Corporation , which had been exporting to the Third World large quantities of chlordane and heptachlor , " two of the most highly toxic persistent and bio-accumulative insecticides ever made " according to the report . |
| 5 | While Francis had been gazing into the unseeable distance , the wall had extended several metres across the clearing . |
| 6 | In the early hours of Sunday 13 February 1692 , Captain Campbell , from a clan hostile to the Macdonalds , along with 120 of his soldiers , whom the Macdonalds had been entertaining for the previous fortnight , suddenly fell upon their hosts and butchered them , shooting Macdonald himself in the back and killing nearly 70 men , women and children . |
| 7 | Since he 'd arrived at Montpelier Square he had been listening for the slightest movement elsewhere in the flat . |
| 8 | On the seminary hill a strange edifice had been constructing over the last previous months . |
| 9 | Leith mentally shook herself to join in the conversation , realising that her mother had been speaking of the wonderful opportunities there were for world-wide travelling these days . |
| 10 | Reports at the turn of the year 1942–3 referring in the usual glowing terms of undiminished confidence of the people in ‘ its beloved Führer ’ and claiming that ‘ the person of the Führer was as always put beyond criticism ’ had been speaking in the conventional exaggerations of the regime 's apparatchiks . |
| 11 | Franca , who had been leaning against the big warm cast-iron stove with a spoon in her hand , threw down the spoon with a clang and marched through the door into her sitting room . |
| 12 | You may lose some credibility with the clientele if you demolish him or her with a blitzkrieg attack only to find later that they had been looking for the nearest toilet ! |
| 13 | Mandy 's parents had been understandably concerned at her friendship with Mark , but their demands on her had been bordering on the unreasonable . |
| 14 | Balmer had been thinking about the spectral lines from hydrogen . |
| 15 | She had been thinking of the three men downstairs , though perhaps one could hardly count John as being in the running . |
| 16 | In 1613 , for example , the king married his daughter Elizabeth to Frederick of the Palatinate , one of the leading figures of European Calvinism ; similarly , in 1618 four representatives of the English church attended the Synod of Dort , the conference called to resolve the bitter dispute which had been raging in the United Provinces over the doctrine of predestination . |
| 17 | Alfred 's shop looked as though it had been closed and deserted for months ; it was hard to believe that it was only three days since a few people , at least , had been entering through the rickety door with its small glass panes to buy patent medicines or seek advice . |
| 18 | Thornton had been pushing for the same sort of readership , and the two men had another thing in common — they wanted action . |
| 19 | At the same time , General Noriega had been flirting with the Soviet Union and , according to US intelligence sources , continues to receive arms from Moscow . |
| 20 | The owners of smaller industrial enterprises usually retained many of the antiaristocratic views of the early nineteenth century , when the bourgeoisie had been struggling against the Old Regime . |
| 21 | Headteacher Terry Anderson said staff had been struggling in the cramped conditions since the school was opened in 1985 . |
| 22 | She claimed she and the murdered girl had been drinking with the old man , and that he had killed her friend , but the old man was acquitted and McLachlan was sentenced to hang . |
| 23 | They had been drinking for the best part of an hour but none were drunk . |
| 24 | They had been drinking in the local dockyard club in the company of Maddison and his fiancee , Deborah Scott , 29 , and all four had left together . |
| 25 | The ‘ piecemeal ’ entry of the former colleges of education and some other colleges which had not previously secured polytechnic status was not quite along lines that the Robbins Committee had proposed , but the picture of higher education that had been developing from the early 1960s was now broader and more complex . |
| 26 | It was apparent that Labour had done well in the old inner cities , which the population had been leaving in the previous decade , partly owing to the growth of suburbs , partly owing to the effects of wartime bombing . |
| 27 | ‘ Present from Alan behind the bar , ’ said Sarah , drawing out the glass she had been holding behind the frilly apron the waitresses at the Right and Wrong had to wear . |
| 28 | This was it , the confrontation-point which he had been dreading for the best part of a week . |
| 29 | So the young policeman ( who had been eating with the other young men in the passage outside the guestroom ) came in and read the transcript of the court judgement which had condemned the boy from Zliten . |
| 30 | The thieves took £80 that 73-year-old Peggy Metcalfe had been saving for the past three months . |