Example sentences of "[noun pl] [vb past] [been] a [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | Many , probably the great majority of the population , were convinced by 1939 if not before that the Jews had been a harmful influence in German society , and that it would be better if those still remaining left ( or were forced to leave ) as soon as possible . |
| 2 | To make the most of beneficial planetary influences had been a principal object of Marsilio Ficino ( 1433–99 ) , one of the first scholars to give the practice of magic the semblance of respectability . |
| 3 | Their lives had been a circular journey : no less than nine of them had spent their schooldays there . |
| 4 | Tobias had been a poor choice , as Jonadab himself admitted . |
| 5 | Mr Major told MPs that the awarding of honours had been a valued part of British life for centuries but the system must from time to time be reviewed . |
| 6 | Those limitations had been a great attraction to Anna , when they first met . |
| 7 | Courtrooms The lack of sufficient courtrooms had been a continuing problem , but should be resolved when the new courts in the Thomas More Building came into use in January 1990 . |
| 8 | Other resolutions included : the adoption of a Common Resident Card for all citizens and measures to facilitate travel and residence rights and the movement of goods by road within the community ; the establishment of a Standing Mediation Committee in response to the conflicts between member states ; the eventual establishment of a single economic community in West Africa ; the approval of a new assessment of members ' contributions to the budget — once again , non-payment of contributions had been a contentious issue ; and agreement to ratify all protocols by Dec. 31 , 1990 . |
| 9 | Dealing with Francis 's belongings had been a useful excuse , when all I had really wanted was to meet with Leon Kennedy , arrange a conclusive deal . |
| 10 | The last locomotive off the shed in BR days had been a Black Five , No. 45156 , in 1966 , when the shed closed . |
| 11 | Forty thousand pounds he had paid for it , a sum which now seemed laughably small , but which in those days had been a vast amount to pay for a private house , even in such a prime position . |
| 12 | His early defence of Shelley and Milton against T. S. Eliot 's attacks had been a paradoxical defence of their classicism of style ; his influential essay on metre a defence of using classical terms to describe English poetry ; and his finest work of literary history , awkwardly entitled ( as part of a series ) English Literature in the Sixteenth Century excluding Drama ( 1954 ) , extolled the ‘ golden ’ voice of Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser , as opposed to ‘ drab ’ , in a critical climate in which Metaphysicals like Donne and Herbert counted for more than their courtly forerunners among the Elizabethans . |
| 13 | The past ten years had been a long , strange and often puzzling journey for Mike Oldfield . |
| 14 | Its dereliction over the past two years had been a constant topic of conversation . |
| 15 | Many secondees had been a considerable time in their pre-secondment posts and were looking for variety . |
| 16 | They had tried to head these off , but because they could slip into the lanes and wynds of the town , this had proved difficult , Ramsay interrupted to demand whether one of these fugitives had been a tall man in shirt and breeches ; but they said that in the darkness they could not tell . |
| 17 | The barbarian kings had been a great source of perplexity to the Christian bishops of the early Middle Ages . |
| 18 | They assumed that their arrests had been a political move and began to suspect that their continued detention had equally a political motive . |
| 19 | The men were correct that their arrests had been a political decision . |
| 20 | By now , the negotiations had been a long and tedious process . |
| 21 | Mines had been a potential hazard at or near the scene of fighting or port approaches since 1983 . |
| 22 | Famines had been a cyclical phenomenon in the Volga region , as they had been in Asia , for centuries . |
| 23 | A possible explanation of this is that Ecgberht was indeed regarded as Ealhmund 's heir and that Ealhmund in turn inherited from King Ecgberht of Kent a local overlordship of south-eastern England which in varying forms had been a recurring feature of historical development in the area since the time of Aethelberht , son of Eormenric . |
| 24 | The repeal of these laws had been a persistent demand of human rights and opposition groups . |
| 25 | He writes that the issue of women priests had been a main cause of the Crockford 's row . |
| 26 | The Evergreens had been a large and comfortably rustic dwelling , too big and rambling to be a house but too small and unpretentious to be a mansion . |
| 27 | The star publicly admitted that he had the disease only 24 hours before he died last November , but his friend , David Minns , said media rumours had been a constant worry to him . |
| 28 | There was no lack of enterprise in founding monasteries or endowing them ; it seems likely that if spinsters had been a serious problem to the fathers of the age , more convents of nuns would have appeared . |