Example sentences of "[adj] [pers pn] had been [v-ing] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | By the time I was twelve years old I had been thinking for some time about getting a bird of my own . |
| 2 | The sun was full on her face , and it was clear she had been crying . |
| 3 | To do this he had been dropping dummies by parachute near Italian prisoner-of-war camps , and the advent of some real parachutists was an obvious gift . |
| 4 | As he moved away from the tree it became apparent to Marian that between him and the trunk lay a substantial sack , and that it was this he had been defending so stoutly . |
| 5 | The man had been so embarrassed he had been pretending to study the graffiti on the cell walls . |
| 6 | The most upsetting thing was that it made her realise just how much she had been allowing him to guide her in the decision , putting her desire to leave the nurses ' home and her pleasure at Dr Entwistle 's recommendation very much in second place . |
| 7 | When she was nineteen she had been going out with a steady boyfriend for three years , and they had decided to get married . |
| 8 | Since 1171 he had been negotiating with Count Humbert of Maurienne . |
| 9 | Gradually , during his visits there , he began to tell her how much he had been looking forward to it , and confided how he would remember their ‘ walking the policies , ( which is what Delia Sutherland called a businesslike like across her property ) and sitting up late at night drinking brandy , discussing plans . |
| 10 | He saw the naked longing in her amber eyes and realized for the first time how much he had been neglecting her . |
| 11 | When I came to the Riding in 1960 I had been teaching in Leeds for five fairly empty years . |
| 12 | It was obvious they had been talking about him . |
| 13 | I went reinforced too by all I had been doing for myself and with the knowledge that I felt better than I had felt for some time and that that growth towards well being appeared to be increasing with each day . |
| 14 | He said yesterday : ‘ I 'm sure I had been making inquiries ( in 1945 ) about what would happen to people who we sent back . |
| 15 | The latter I had been intending to read for years and , by happenstance , had come across a cheap edition in a book sale just days before setting out . |
| 16 | I was sure she had been holding a small phial with the letters ‘ SUL ’ written on it . |
| 17 | Rather desperately , Celia steered the conversation round to her and Brian 's new house in the country , how Alison and Geoffrey must come and stay , that they would be less than fifty miles apart ; while Alison , obviously thankful to turn to less delicate matters , regaled her with a description of all she had been doing in her garden and some rather dull anecdotes about the neighbours whom Celia and Brian had met on their last visit . |
| 18 | For a moment she thought he was going to throw his arms round her and hug her , she was sure he had been thinking of it , but he hesitated and she turned away . |
| 19 | Since the 1970s it had been fending off pressure from Scandinavia . |
| 20 | It was delicious to be close to Alain , to belong to him , to know that all the time she had been alone he had been thinking about her . |
| 21 | Since about 1840 they had been expanding the scope of their products to include the whole range of cotton-processing machinery . |
| 22 | At first it had been harrowing , but he had grown used to it . |
| 23 | It was possible he had been hoping to frighten Steve , but his exact motives were unknown . |
| 24 | Whenever possible he had been forcing the lords of Aquitaine to acknowledge that they held their " honours " , their counties , viscounties and other seigneuries , not as independent lordships but as fiefs , for which they owed the Duke homage . |
| 25 | Where others were most sharply conscious of the crisis posed for theology by the development of modern culture and the change in our self-awareness , he saw the real crisis as lying in the inability of theology to do justice to its object , and called it to look in the opposite direction from that it had been taking . |
| 26 | I heard this with embarrassment , remembering how terribly bored and miserable I had been sitting there on a long hot afternoon , hardly understanding a word as chiefs and elders talked to our delegation in local dialect . |
| 27 | And in the 1930s he had been unforgiving towards these friends of his youth . |
| 28 | Right up until the coup in nineteen twenty seven they had been following a policy dictated by Moscow , dictated by Stalin which told them form alliances with the Kuomintang , work with the Kuomintang , first of all trust Chiang Kai-shek , then when Chiang Kai-shek turned on them they were told to trust the left Kuomintang leaders who were based in Wo Han in the middle Yangtze valleys , and then they turned on them a policy , in other words , that had proved absolutely disastrous . |
| 29 | As recently as September 1990 it had been expecting a 2.4 per cent growth for 1991 . |
| 30 | He kept quiet He had been wondering where political allies might be , if anywhere . |