Example sentences of "and [vb past] [been] a [adj] " in BNC.

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1 MacDonald also had condemned the Lloyd George coalition as corrupt and unprincipled and had been a major beneficiary of its fall .
2 He was the younger brother of Lajos ' father , and had been a successful export — a businessman who owned a factory .
3 The owl had been cold and slow and had been a poor meal for the wolf .
4 He played in every position in the Bangor back-line and had been a regular member of the Ulster squad that swept the boards in the inter-provincial championships in the last nine years .
5 In Rhodri 's cast-off clothes and worn shoes he looked like a penurious wandering scrivener of sixty ; in truth he was barely forty , and had been a tall , strong man of his hands once , and would be as good again after a month of eating regularly , and nursing his frayed body and broken and blistered feet .
6 She was nearly 80 years old at the time and had been a devoted parent and strict catholic all her life .
7 One senior official with a ringside seat at the traumas of winter 1973–4 contemplated resignation during the first week of March so that he could tell the country that Heath was a serious man and had been a worthy prime minister .
8 Mario Solórzano was secretary-general of the Social Democratic Party ( PSD ) and had been a presidential candidate in 1985 .
9 He had grown up in the slums of Harlem and had been a promising middleweight fighter in the late fifties before the lure of alcohol had devastated his career .
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