Example sentences of "had [adv] [be] a [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | However , by adept diplomacy , he was able to impose a form of pax Britannica on what had hitherto been a turbulent part of Africa and thereby maintain the conditions best suited for fostering trade . |
| 2 | There was further a need to replace what had hitherto been a haphazard method of payment by a more formalised scheme involving the payment of a specified sum on the completion of each flat . |
| 3 | What had hitherto been a sporadic , locally-based protest movement directed against specific wars thus acquired an international dimension of steadily increasing significance and coalesced around these two much broader issues which are of considerably more lasting and widespread concern . |
| 4 | He had rendered her almost mindless there and it had all been a cheap trick , not even part of his wish to get her to accept her father . |
| 5 | Now she finally had to admit that it had all been a total failure . |
| 6 | It had all been a far cry from the excitement of her engagement to the handsome young houseman when the Stevenses had celebrated with a party in the garden of their home . |
| 7 | Perhaps it really had all been a terrible misunderstanding . |
| 8 | And as if it had all been a bad dream , Tara wakes up soon after . |
| 9 | He had given up trying to explain to Willi that Therese was no longer a star , had not been a star for eighteen years , and even then had only been a small rising star . |
| 10 | In the Titan he had only been a partial paladin — merely part of a vaster amplified body which also comprised Tundrish and Valence and Zed Juron and , oh yes , Akbar too . |
| 11 | There had only been a few sharp yelps of pain . |
| 12 | But Derek Law , deputy director of the SSD , said there had only been a few teething problems . |
| 13 | Even in the early 1960s there had only been a few brave individuals . |
| 14 | He 'd closed his eyes once in the last forty hours , and that had only been a restless doze in the back of the car on the way to the border . |
| 15 | It had only been a brief talk and nothing improper was intimated . |
| 16 | At a personal level the visit had obviously been a great success , but Napoleon III came away without any specific extension of the Entente and he left the British Ministers unconvinced of his desire for peace and stability in Europe . |
| 17 | The first sessions had obviously been a useful learning experience for all concerned . |
| 18 | Of course , Jessamy 's arrival on the scene as Julius 's fiancée had obviously been a major crisis . |
| 19 | And it had been little comfort to realise — since he clearly could n't be bothered to even make the effort to get in touch with her — that her marriage had obviously been a disastrous mistake from the very beginning . |
| 20 | He could smell the drink ; it had obviously been a heavy session . |
| 21 | Of course , the problem of " relevance " had long been a familiar one to teachers of English within adult and working-class education . |
| 22 | It had long been a controversial issue and its approval had been delayed for years because of worries about the environmental consequences and the cost of the project . |
| 23 | In the printing trade , mobility had long been a traditional element in the organization of mutual support . |
| 24 | Agricultural hard labour , primarily the cultivation of cotton , had long been a prominent feature of TDC activity . |
| 25 | The divide between theory and empirical data had long been a recurrent and problematic one for the social sciences , not least within sociology . |
| 26 | So it should happen that Mr Kirkley was at home when the guests arrived and was able to add to his surprise and not a little amazement when his daughter 's friend was delivered at his door by Raggie Aggie , for Aggie had long been a known character , she and her hand-cart , and now the pony-driven flat-cart ; and of course the fact that she was almost as broad as it was . |
| 27 | Getting to the launch point , the village of St Arnaud near the tip of the Southern Alps , had long been a logistical triumph . |
| 28 | Mr Goria , 49 , a former Christian Democrat prime minister , had long been a favourite target of opposition MPs and was unpopular in the country because of the chaotic and tactless way he introduced a hated property tax last year . |
| 29 | The sudden chill of isolation which Britain felt in a hostile world , and the thrill of Dominion contingents serving alongside troops from ‘ home ’ , raised in new form what had long been a nagging conundrum — that the outlying parts of the Empire which Britain defended bore no appreciable share of the burden , precisely because of the fundamental political syllogism : no taxation without representation ; no representation without common responsibility ; no common responsibility without sacrifice of separate independence . |
| 30 | Damn him if she would explain that the young man to whom he 'd referred had merely been a fellow Briton attending a conference on international computing , that they 'd exchanged nothing more than a few polite comments natural to fellow compatriots abroad , and that his arm had been lying across the back of the bench seats and not round her shoulders . |