Example sentences of "[noun pl] had [adv] [been] [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | But he pointed out that drivers had always been liable to pay tax on their allowances if it exceeded the cost of running and maintaining a car . |
| 2 | My clothes , hair , ears , trainers had all been full of broken bits of twig … |
| 3 | Jews had previously been unable to travel as complete families , and had to post bonds of US$1,000 per person when going abroad . |
| 4 | The challenge of the reformers had been one great reality but the showmen had always been aware of the other reality and that was that very large numbers of ordinary people , and that included the rich and the poor and people from all nations , were fascinated by moving pictures . |
| 5 | Never being lost for words had always been one of Rory 's great talents , but right now it seemed to have deserted her completely , and she was forced to look away from his dark , probing eyes , horribly aware of his apparent ability to see straight through her . |
| 6 | The Scots had never been parochial in their cultural self-perceptions . |
| 7 | To her astonishment , Sally-Anne , who for two dreadful months had hardly been able to bring herself to be near any man , however young and apparently innocuous , wanted to stroke the corner of his mouth — more , she wanted to smooth the scar away — or , rather , since that was impossible , to run her hand down it and tell him that it did not matter , such a thing could only disturb those who were themselves already disturbed ! |
| 8 | The remaining 42 vessels had always been British . |
| 9 | In Butler and Stokes ' survey , of children whose parents had both been Conservative , 89% expressed a first preference for the Conservative party . |
| 10 | My relationship with my parents had never been close . |
| 11 | The VNODD as well as the communists had already been involved in fomenting strikes but on the whole they do not seem to have attached themselves to any cause other than nationalism and , while they were particularly active in attempting to subvert the army , when they finally and out of desperation , having been heavily penetrated by the Sûreté , attempted to begin their armed struggle , many of the Vietnamese riflemen in the battalion , which was induced to mutiny , rallied instead to their French officers . |
| 12 | Some reported incidence of splitting but many more reported that their nails had never been stronger and some said they now grew more quickly ! |
| 13 | In the end , Matza 's argument is not so much an attack on correctionalism as an assertion of the not very original point that , whatever your starting assumption , it is best to keep your mind open to all possibilities ( although he was right to draw attention to the fact that correctionalists had often been guilty of not doing so ) . |
| 14 | Councillor Michael Snelling said planners had already been generous allowing the couple to build a bigger home on the site . |
| 15 | Local elections confirmed the trend and their historian has interpreted them as showing that " by 1913 , the Conservatives had rarely been stronger in the Councils of the land , or indeed more poised for success in the forthcoming general election " . |
| 16 | Hitherto , the ecumenical gatherings had chiefly been concerned with theological issues , even if matters of discipline such as the manner of determining the date of Easter had crept in . |
| 17 | The upholstery of the seats had once been crimson : it had faded to a faint red glow , balding , springs occasionally exposed . |
| 18 | And people going on seaside holidays would have forgotten how stations had once been larger than life , almost ; places of meeting and parting , from which dusty , crowded trains had borne servicemen and women to who knew where . |
| 19 | Traditional leadership of the kind provided by the landed classes had never been significant in antislavery . |
| 20 | This legislation had been hailed as a powerful weapon with which to seize drug barons ' fortunes but up to May last year police and Customs investigators had only been able to confiscate £11 million . |
| 21 | The implication of all this is that such places had perhaps been important as estates or administrative centres as well as having marketing functions long before late Saxon times and thus could be developed into true towns fairly easily . |
| 22 | Both places had once been red on the map . |
| 23 | He wanted a reserved figure because previous applicants had all been loud and pushy . |
| 24 | At the opposite extreme , paupers ' graves had long been unmarked ; but in between , death had been the metaphorical leveller . |
| 25 | Too many pages had already been unturned — it was too late now . |
| 26 | Since 1914 only ten British officers had ever been six times decorated for gallantry and one of these , Braham , who in 1951 was awarded the AFC for hazardous developmental work on all-weather fighter aircraft , uniquely achieved a seventh decoration . |
| 27 | Changes had also been necessary in quality control procedures and audit methods , and less extensive changes had been needed in practice management and staff training . |
| 28 | And they had , over and over again , so many times that no one except me seemed to remember that things had ever been different . |
| 29 | For instance , the peasants of the Maramureş to whom Ceauşescu had appealed to preserve their ancient ways had only been able to do so until then because their poor hill-side farms had not yet been collectivized . |
| 30 | Interest rates had already been low for twenty years when the turnpike mania began in 1750 and remained low after it ended in 1772 . |