Example sentences of "[noun pl] [pers pn] [was/were] the [noun sg] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was the crown 's desire to spend , and Parliament 's desire to limit the tax burden , which led to regular conflicts between the king and Parliament . |
| 2 | For the conservative-historians it was the Profumo affair that most forcefully illustrated the altered circumstances that 1960s Britain found itself in . |
| 3 | Like many so-called archaic methods it was the result of long adaption of means to ends ; like many supposed pockets of peasant routine the Basque system could adapt itself to new demands . |
| 4 | In three quarters of the job losses it was the role of the factory which was important rather than its operation or location . |
| 5 | In many respects he was the archetype of the ‘ patriots ’ and ‘ public men ’ who played a crucial political role as spokesmen for their localities and ‘ the country ’ in the years preceding the civil war . |
| 6 | In her short shirtwaist dress and white winklepicker shoes she was the height of fashion . |
| 7 | For insurance companies it was the marketing story of the decade . |
| 8 | From his dark expertly cut hair to his hand-made shoes he was the epitome of the new young man . |
| 9 | In these circumstances it was the business of responsible churchmen to lend support to the monarch in every way they could . |
| 10 | On even days it was the glossary . |
| 11 | Apparently in the old days it was the place where tenant farmers paid their rent to the estate . |
| 12 | In those days it was the haunt of crocodiles and hippopotamus , both symbols of evil in the iconography of ancient Egypt . |
| 13 | For retail banks it was the result of their money transmission service . |
| 14 | For weeks he was the trouble of my dreams and it took real courage to go to see him in Attila the Hun . |
| 15 | For 45 years it was the home of the Wiltshire historian Canon Jackson . |
| 16 | It 's no exaggeration to say that I owe my start in politics to the G M B because after having worked , as Dick said , for the G M B for a number of years it was the support of the G M B which helped me win the nomination for Chesterly Street and in the early eighties I can remember when er the Labour Party was going through a difficult period it was officials and members of the G M B who were a steadying influence in my constituency , as they have been ever since . |
| 17 | Only in recent years has it been taken over as the civic centre , and the Goose Fair relegated to the outer suburbs ; but for something like a thousand years it was the market place . |
| 18 | Within the last 20 years it was the practice here to pen the sheep for clipping and for the fleeces to be thrown up to a helper standing on the gallery , who put them at once into the barn for storage . |
| 19 | The initiative in convening meetings at intervals of every two or three months was taken by David Faulkner while an Under-Secretary at the Prison Department in 1981 , and continued during the eight years he was the Deputy Under-Secretary of State in charge of the Criminal and Statistical Departments and the Research and Planning Unit at the Home Office from 1982–90 . |
| 20 | For 10 years he was the principal of the school in Spain , before becoming a merchant banker and financial consultant . |
| 21 | For years he was the dean of biology , and in 1985 he became founder-chairman of Vietnam 's Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Centre . |
| 22 | Before Faraday 's successes it was the action at a distance theory that was progressive . |
| 23 | In pious families it was the rule that the servants attended family prayers . |
| 24 | For the older cattle it was the animation of a remembered pleasure . |
| 25 | Charlie was an employee like everyone else , but in the absence of the owners he was the man at the top … all the responsibility , almost none of the rakeoff . |
| 26 | In many ways it was the currency reform and the severance of trade with Germany the following year that had paved the way for the military coup in Poland that installed Marshal Piłsudski as head of government in May 1926 . |
| 27 | But for many more intellectuals it was the death knell of their belief in God . |
| 28 | For mums it was the era of the cheap washing machine that would free them from drudgery . |
| 29 | In many instances it was the influence of all of these taken together . |
| 30 | In both instances it was the sister whose earnings had been substantially restricted or reduced . |