Example sentences of "but it had [been] [adj] " in BNC.

  Next page

No	Sentence
1	But it had been close and the children had never taken liberties with the river again .
2	It was a very dowdy dress , and old , and it smelled of mothballs and , faintly , of years of perspiration soaked into the fabric , but it had been well and carefully preserved .
3	Losing his job with the band had not really been to do with his mother being ill , but it had been easy to suggest the idea to Barnett .
4	She 'd only met him a few times , but it had been easy for Julie to see that Ross Wyndham was even more Leo-like than his wife .
5	And she kept trying to convince herself that Julius would never carry out his threat , but it had been four very long years that they had been apart .
6	He saw and he cared , but it had been many months since he had counted with her .
7	He does not greatly care for the dark purplish bathroom suite ( ‘ Damson ’ , the estate agent 's brochure had called the shade ) but it had been one of the things that attracted Marjorie when they bought the house two years ago — the bathroom , with its kidney-shaped handbasin and goldplated taps and sunken bath and streamlined loo and bidet .
8	He had been scared then but it had been short-lived : terror lasting a matter of a few seconds , a minute at most .
9	But it had been simmering for a couple of years before that .
10	But it had been inconceivable that it would really come to such a point .
11	It was unthinkable that John could be dead , but it had been unthinkable that he would be held for this long and it had happened .
12	It made a good reason for those excluded to dislike Miss Morgan , but it had been true any time these past two years .
13	He had changed his name , of course , but it had been obvious to Fedorov that he was the same man he had disposed of in the Stadtpark three weeks before .
14	But it had been enough to ensure him , at least pictorially , a vicarious immortality .

  Next page