Example sentences of "had been [adv] [art] [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | Raising the £6.5 million , ‘ the largest sum ever attracted by a radical project in Britain' according to the publicity blurb , had been either a heroic achievement by selfless , dedicated humanitarians or the blag of the century . |
| 2 | She had told him how Karen had gone half stupid over Mallachy , when it had been just a one-night stand , a one-night stand that did not , in the event , come off . |
| 3 | At first , like her many other activities , the home maintenance course at the Adult Education Centre had been just a desperate device to take her away from the boredom of George . |
| 4 | At that time the settlement of Cape Town , which had been just a small staging post on the voyage between the Netherlands and the East Indies , was beginning to grow , but although the English had occupied the Cape in 1806 , the white population remained mainly Dutch until the arrival of many new settlers from Britain in 1820 . |
| 5 | The sixth , published in 1752 and dedicated to the Earl of Northumberland , had an elaborate frontispiece ( hitherto it had been just a large formal garden with a plantation in the distance ) etched and engraved by Edward Rooker ( 1711–74 ) , after a drawing by Samuel Wade of an allegorical group showing Britannia receiving the fruits of the earth . |
| 6 | But it had been just a momentary longing for something she seemed destined never to have . |
| 7 | The hotel is a group of buildings surrounded by gardens and trees in a compound , and we noticed from the start a vaguely British feeling about it — we asked our guide and he told us it had been formerly the British Embassy ( presumably during the years when this had been Chiang Kai-Shek 's capital ) , and had remained in British hands until 1960 or so , I suppose it was a consulate or something . |
| 8 | Aisha had been both a tribal companion to the Sheikha and a ‘ nanny ’ to her children . |
| 9 | She could remember the bra , it had been rather a good black lace wired Kayser Bondor , of a line that appeared to have been discontinued , as she 'd never been able to find another . |
| 10 | It had been rather an expensive one as he had gone for a fleecy-lined designer number with flashes of blue , to match his eyes , on the shoulders and down the legs . |
| 11 | On April 25 this reported that the security forces were to blame for provoking violence from what had been previously a peaceful crowd by making baton charges . |
| 12 | Belmodes had been around a long time . |
| 13 | For only I and one other person in that courtroom knew the truth , knew that the hand which had dispatched William had been neither a female hand nor a male one , but the hand of a terrible neuter thing ! |
| 14 | Well , there had been neither the commanding tone nor the easy insolence from that couple ; and yet , in a way she knew her father was right in his summing up of the gentry . |
| 15 | There was a tendency for the highly born to be preferred to the prince bishoprics of Germany ; and in the tenth and early eleventh centuries training to knightly pursuits had been almost a necessary qualification for a successful German bishop . |
| 16 | Merseyside or Tyneside there had been almost a general deindustrialization . |
| 17 | According to The Famous Grouse Director , Matthew Gloag , the company 's interest in the next year 's tournament in Edinburgh had been almost a foregone conclusion due to the enormous benefits of having been involved in the 1991 World Cup . |
| 18 | Apart from the South Wales Miners ' Federation , it had been almost the only major working class organization through which the Communists had consistently exercised influence . |
| 19 | It had been almost the unofficial waste basket papers were dumped there to be kept but no one had been through it carefully for perhaps a century . |
| 20 | Tamar sat and talked quietly , telling her Uncle about her life and about Victoria , who had been only a small child when he had last seen her . |
| 21 | But there had been only a small decrease in mental hospital beds and little sign of a significant shift to different forms of care . |
| 22 | What had been only a dense red glow when I first looked into the chamber was now a torrent of liquid flame . |
| 23 | Ensign Piper had been only a short time in Australia when he volunteered for duty in the convict settlement on Norfolk Island . |
| 24 | Though she had been quite a successful model herself Arlene had never reached those giddy heights — the thought that now a pupil and protégé of hers might achieve it made her prickle with excitement . |
| 25 | It had been quite a good summer in some ways . |
| 26 | She did n't want them to know that her life had been quite a privileged one . |
| 27 | I was tempted to call it a day there and then , pull over and have a kip , but my stomach reminded me that I had n't thrown it a bone since the ploughman 's at lunch-time , and it had been quite an eventful day . |
| 28 | The presentation had been quite an unnecessary proceeding , as she and Uncle Orrin Tunstall had agreed , seeing that she had met and known both the King and Queen since she was ten years old and had first visited England with her mama and papa . |
| 29 | Owen was not sure that whatever lesson Osman had learned had been quite the right one . |
| 30 | Yet one can not escape the feeling that if Humanae Vitae had been essentially a reasoned condemnation of abortion , the witness of the Church would have been all the more powerful . |