Example sentences of "had [been] an [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | Opening the proceedings at the morning AGM for the Institution 's Governors the RNLI 's Chairman , Mr Michael Vernon , began by reminding the meeting that 1990 had been an eventful and difficult year in many parts of the world , with a sharp recession and uncomfortably high inflation affecting these islands . |
| 2 | IT is sad that a pub should turn you away simply for the kind of fashion you decide to adopt , particularly since you had been an accepted customer for some years . |
| 3 | It was clear that there had been an implicit agreement to hold back output until a higher price was fixed . |
| 4 | The Crimea had been an autonomous republic from 1921 to 1945 . |
| 5 | The insistence on separate sources had been an ill-judged reaction to the Reformation Scriptura sola ; now , by viewing both Scripture and Tradition as dynamic realities , they can be seen as intimately connected , gifts of the one Spirit , in a way that satisfied not only almost all the Council 's members , but even the Reformed observers ( Schutz and Thurian , 1968 , ch. 2 ) . |
| 6 | That had been an awful tea they 'd had at five o'clock ; two slices of bread and fat , a slab of hard cake and a bowl of milk ; then nothing else , only a drink of water , if they wanted one , before they came to bed , and it only half-past seven . |
| 7 | The house was well-kept and clean and even the garden looked well-kept , which her uncle said had been an awful mess before she came . |
| 8 | It turned out that Rose Fox had been an awful lot of people in previous lives — mostly male , and all of them , apart from a rather dull-sounding galley slave in 34 BC , rather famous or important . |
| 9 | On Tuesday night , the company held back from issuing dismissal notices until after yesterday 's meeting , but Mr McLevy said there had been an overwhelming vote , with only four against , to reject the Timex proposals . |
| 10 | On the way to Eric 's first hiding place there had been an uncomfortable few minutes when the doctor 's car , in spite of its prominently displayed red cross , had been stopped by a carabinieri patrol . |
| 11 | It had been an uncomfortable and disturbing sensation and he was still wondering whether it had n't been only the incense , the spring evening , and nostalgia for his boyhood . |
| 12 | From the beginning , however , his position as successor to Lee had been an uncomfortable one . |
| 13 | SINA had been an inspired hoax dreamt up by the imaginative Mr Abel ( of whom more presently ) . |
| 14 | It had been an indifferent season for the New York Yankees , the team he had followed faithfully for thirty years , and , at 4-I down to the Detroit Tigers with two innings left , defeat seemed to be on the cards for a third successive game . |
| 15 | Mainly under the influence of Pietro Bembo , the codifier of the Tuscan speech as the literary language of Italy in his Prose della Volgar Lingua ( 1525 ) , there had been an extraordinary revival of interest in Petrarch and the patrons of the frottola-composers , such as the Mantuan Duchess Isabella d'Este , asked them for settings of Petrarch 's sonnets and strophic canzoni . |
| 16 | During the War he had been an auxiliary coastguard . |
| 17 | His life had been an annual week in Bridlington with liver on Tuesdays ; a ‘ selection box ’ from Auntie Eve and a new two-wheeler one Christmas ; washing airing round a coal fire on wet Mondays ; Vick on his chest and wool vests in winter ; ‘ Puddin 's o n't table , lads ! ’ at 5.30 come hell or high water . |
| 18 | Scott 's first letter had been an appalling error , and it would seem sufficient reason why Donaldson should suggest reversing the decision to award him the Gold Medal , but Scott , when drafting his Recollections in later years , looked for further motives behind Donaldson 's action as he could not ‘ reconcile it with the character and generosity which Donaldson has usually evinced ’ . |
| 19 | The large oval locket that had been an eighteenth-birthday present from her aunt , a gold bracelet , a pair of drop earrings and — she breathed a sigh of relief — her mother 's clip were still in the sandalwood box her parents had given her . |
| 20 | The Agence France-Presse ( AFP ) news agency reported from Kinshasa on Jan. 7 that there had been an abortive coup attempt the previous month , as a result of which a number of high-ranking officers were said to have been imprisoned . |
| 21 | Although there had been an appreciable rise in incomes , supplies in the state shops continued to be poor , encouraging a growing black market [ for clampdown in August against black marketeers see p. 37665 ] . |
| 22 | The article headlined ‘ The Nuclear Express ! ’ was full of good positive statements about this transport and concluded : ‘ It had been an eye-opening day for me on Britain 's safest train ’ . |
| 23 | Perhaps the development of most interest to us in 1854 was that on an American initiative there had been an international conference at Brussels on shortening ship 's passages by producing better charts of winds and currents . |
| 24 | If you had been an out-of-work farm hand near Inverness , or near Dumfries , why might you have been one of many who moved to Glasgow in the last century ? |
| 25 | Interesting to me , that is , because my only previous contact with the world of spirits had been an eerie couple of evenings spent with two schoolgirl friends , when we were all sixteen , ‘ table tapping ’ . |
| 26 | It turned out that she and her husband were experts on reincarnation and ran a sort of reincarnation centre in Switzerland and she had been an Egyptian princess — before , you know — and written books about it . |
| 27 | He had been an unsuccessful amateur jockey some fifteen years ago and had then been assistant to a leading jump trainer in Lambourn . |
| 28 | Despite strong government denials , local media sources were agreed that an attack on the presidential motorcade had been an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate President Carlos Andrés Pérez on Oct. 12 in the western border town of Paraguaipoa , in the state of Zulia . |
| 29 | The three men had been an advance squad ; trained technicians . |
| 30 | By the time I left his office , I felt as if I had been an established outside-left for years , ’ Bastin later recalled . |