Example sentences of "[noun pl] [vb past] been [art] [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 | The lot of the Jews had been an uneasy one for many centuries ; now , for the first time , they were massacred in western Europe . |
| 3 | 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 . |
| 4 | For Diana , the last few months had been an emotional rollercoaster as she had tried to come to terms with her new life as a public figure and the suffocating publicity as well as her husband 's ambiguous behaviour towards her . |
| 5 | Their lives had been a circular journey : no less than nine of them had spent their schooldays there . |
| 6 | Tobias had been a poor choice , as Jonadab himself admitted . |
| 7 | 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 . |
| 8 | Those limitations had been a great attraction to Anna , when they first met . |
| 9 | Before 1920 , writes Charlie Buchan in his autobiography , ‘ the county leagues had been the happy hunting grounds for the professional clubs . |
| 10 | 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 . |
| 11 | 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 . |
| 12 | 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 . |
| 13 | One of its outstanding early proponents had been the French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes ( 1596–1650 ) . |
| 14 | One of the pilots had been the ace Al Deere . |
| 15 | The last locomotive off the shed in BR days had been a Black Five , No. 45156 , in 1966 , when the shed closed . |
| 16 | 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 . |
| 17 | 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 . |
| 18 | The past ten years had been a long , strange and often puzzling journey for Mike Oldfield . |
| 19 | Its dereliction over the past two years had been a constant topic of conversation . |
| 20 | Agricultural export subsidies had been the crucial stumbling block on which this round of GATT talks foundered in December 1990 [ see p. 37930 ] . |
| 21 | The insistence on separate sources had been an ill-judged reaction to the Reformation Scriptura sola ; now , by viewing both Scripture and Tradition as dynamic realities , they can be seen as intimately connected , gifts of the one Spirit , in a way that satisfied not only almost all the Council 's members , but even the Reformed observers ( Schutz and Thurian , 1968 , ch. 2 ) . |
| 22 | Many secondees had been a considerable time in their pre-secondment posts and were looking for variety . |
| 23 | 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 . |
| 24 | Mr Chambers ' name and virtues had been the main topic of her mother 's conversation for the last two months , and no matter how many times Honor expressed her dislike of the man , Flora continued to press the subject . |
| 25 | Prior to that , guilds had been the only groupings of workers . |
| 26 | She felt she was honour bound , as hostess , to keep the conversation going , and the mention of the poor man who had had to endure Harry Burrows moaning in a sheet beneath his windows had been the only topic to cling to her memory . |
| 27 | Irons and radios had been the only appliances owned by the majority of consumers before the War and they were joined by electric fires at the end of it . |
| 28 | The barbarian kings had been a great source of perplexity to the Christian bishops of the early Middle Ages . |
| 29 | The three men had been an advance squad ; trained technicians . |
| 30 | They assumed that their arrests had been a political move and began to suspect that their continued detention had equally a political motive . |