Example sentences of "[vb past] be the first [noun] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | all the satellites hanging down it was very good the way it had all been done in , in that respect but what I found was the first bit was very boring , I found but when it got going a bit it was better but the whole moral of the story was that nowhere is perfect to live but it 's hard for y young children like this |
| 2 | ‘ What happened was the first recurrence of an experience she had not had since she was a child . |
| 3 | ‘ What I saw was the first draft of the first letter . |
| 4 | That voyage had been the first leg of a planned circumnavigation , but those dreams had been brutally shattered when Masquerade was stolen from an anchorage in the Florida Keys . |
| 5 | The Royal Navy had been the first Service to react strongly to the Sandys Reformation . |
| 6 | During his visit to London , President Yeltsin noted that Britain had been the first country to denounce the August coup , and the first to recognise Russia ; the first to propose Russian membership of the International Monetary Fund ; the first to propose an April deadline for that membership ; and the first to support a stabilisation fund for the rouble . |
| 7 | ( Romania had been the first country to recognise Moldavan independence , followed by Georgia and Lithuania . ) |
| 8 | There will always be the question as to what would have happened if the last remedy had been the first prescription but in my experience that 's the sort of question homœopaths ask rather than patients ! |
| 9 | Craig Matthews , another South African , had been the first choice before he failed a medical . |
| 10 | His son John had been the first editor of The Stopfordian in 1929 . |
| 11 | ‘ What , ’ they asked , ‘ had been the first sign that the forests were in decline ? ’ |
| 12 | Despite them the withdrawal went smoothly , with the Colonel , who had been the first man ashore , the last man off , just behind Charley Head , who , as signals officer , had kept up a stream of messages , 40 an hour at one point , that included reassuring but unproven ‘ going well ’ reports . |
| 13 | Billy had been the first man to call her Annie and she felt strangely pleased . |
| 14 | It was Canning , after all , who had been the first virtuoso of diplomacy by public opinion . |
| 15 | I had been the first Chairman of Wells-Next-The-Sea , Town Council , but two or three years afterwards , we decided to turn , er , the old cinema , they wanted to turn the old cinema into a Dance Hall . |
| 16 | The kingdom of Greece had a longer history ; the Greeks had been the first subject people to break free from Ottoman rule after 1815 . |
| 17 | The great hero Rodrigo del Bivar — El Cid — had been the first person to use the weight of heavily armed cavalry against the more lightly clad Moors . |
| 18 | Sheppard , already famous as ‘ the radio parson ’ — he had been the first person to broadcast a church service — was Canon of St Pauls . |
| 19 | Greece had been the first EEC ‘ associate ’ member in 1962 and had already reduced tariffs and harmonised agricultural policies with the Community . |
| 20 | There was no way of being certain how long she 'd spent on the ward ; it might have been six weeks or six years , but she was guessing at six months because this had been the first commission review that she 'd received . |
| 21 | It was all much as it had been the first time , only evening instead of morning ; and Emily stood by herself as before , and now he knew why , wearing his ring on another finger . |
| 22 | It had been the first time that he had really seen Sara in tears . |
| 23 | Today had been the first time since he died she had not been tortured with thoughts of her Anthony . |
| 24 | She wanted him to plead with her to stay with him , forever , as he 'd done once before , but this time she would accept and tell him how wrong she had been the first time . |
| 25 | Once he had been The First Hand Supreme in all Chung Kuo , Master of Masters and eight times winner of the great annual championship held in Suchow . |
| 26 | It had been the first casino in modern Russia , had operated out of a converted bedroom on the second floor . |
| 27 | This lass had been the first cause of Eachuinn Odhar thinking of an alliance with the Campbells ? |
| 28 | He had been the first serf-owner to take advantage of the reformist Law on Obligated Peasants . |
| 29 | It proved a fitting finale to what had been the first period of sustained fighting in the war . |
| 30 | On this occasion the Duke of Bedford , who had paid for a statue of Bunyan to be erected in the town , recollected how Pilgrim 's Progress had been the first book given to him as a child . |