Example sentences of "had been [v-ing] the " in BNC.

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1 The priest , with folded hands and closed eyes , recited Grace , and the meal began : soup served by a daughter of the same sister of Rose 's who had been taking the photos ; chicken and ham , with salad .
2 After a dress rehearsal for a Symphony Hour show , I suggested , as producer , that in the adagio movement of the main symphonic item the violins had been taking the tempo slightly too fast .
3 Yet he knew I had been taking the Pill every day . ’
4 Reuben Boll had been taking the last part of his annual leave .
5 What made this worse was that we ( there were a few of us Leeds fans in my school ) we friends with a west brom fan , and had been taking the piss all year … had nt they recently gone up to div 1 ?
6 In Switzerland , which had 36,000 political asylum requests in 1990 ( and 17 per cent of whose residents were non-nationals ) , the government had been tightening the rules since February 1991 .
7 However , now that the papers had been reporting the recent news of her husband 's return from Australia — apparently determined to impress his name and tough personality on the City of London — it was obviously about time that she came to a decision about her future .
8 All through the first part of the interview — the crazy part , when she had been talking about seeing her son in the house — Hank had been telling the straight truth .
9 Writers , poets and bards had been telling the stories for centuries but it was not until the Victorians that a visual interpretation was recorded and that was essentially romantic and ill-informed .
10 Sarah had been too ill to defend herself , and besides , in a way Elizabeth Bradford had been telling the truth .
11 Charles was relieved that the information put her in the clear ; she had been telling the truth .
12 So perhaps Lesley-Jane had been telling the truth in her description of the relationship .
13 He knew Phil Jordan 's home number and dialled it , hoping Jordan had been telling the truth about going home .
14 At the same time , it should not be forgotten that some writers had been advocating the use of multiple methods for years :
15 Barbarossa 's initial aim was to unify Germany , and settle a number of conflicts which had been weakening the realm .
16 Benjamin and I had been entertaining the group with a French madrigal , my deep bass a smooth foil to my master 's well-modulated tenor : a stupid little song about a maid who lost her wealth and her virtue in the great city .
17 It was now three in the afternoon , and the offensive odour had been plaguing the neighbours since 10.30 in the morning .
18 ‘ Hello , love , ’ said her father , coming in from the kitchen where he had been shelling the succulent fresh prawns that would form part of a cold seafood and salad lunch , before the hot turkey dinner this evening .
19 On Sept. 2 All-India Radio reported that Pakistani forces had been shelling the Punch sector in Jammu and Kashmir since Aug. 26 and that a woman and two children had been killed .
20 Arthur Hutton , it was reported , was ‘ highly delighted ’ , as he had been planting the hedge as agent for his cousin George , Allison Hutton 's son .
21 Mrs Taylor said she had been urging the Government for months to make public a report by Mr Ponsford confirming the morale problems .
22 Since mid century , philanthropists and social reformers had been urging the removal of the population of the inner-city slums to the more salubrious outskirts of the city .
23 Reading it , the British discovered that they had been speaking the imperial equivalent of prose all their lives .
24 He found he had been speaking the memory out into the night and among the bleak cages around .
25 He needed to think , because although he was sure that Andrus had been speaking the truth , and that he had not deliberately incited Zoser to kill , he still felt puzzled .
26 At the direction of his lance master , he had been patrolling the ancient forest of Haling Heart , south of Scaraby , for three seasons and had found no quests with which to occupy himself , never mind accrue funds for the order .
27 He had been calculating the girl as a mathematical entry in the equation .
28 Control Data had been mulling the use of other RISCs , notably the Hewlett-Packard Co PA chip , but these machinations were , as the company admitted ( UX No 384 ) , a bluff to bring Silicon Graphics and NEC to the table .
29 The Fraud Squad had been seeking the help of several journalists for some weeks , as part of its work on the findings of that official report .
30 For generations prior to this calamity the custodians and promoters of Yahweh — that is , the now canonized Prophets of Israel — had been warning the people that if they did not abandon their syncretistic ways , the wrath of the one true God would descend upon them .
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