Example sentences of "had been the [noun] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | Worst of all , from our point of view , had been the occupation of Parma by the SS . |
| 2 | Clara 's one solace had been the cold , tight dignity of her case , and this had been stolen from her , robbed from her by an elderly woman 's few words of casual humanity . |
| 3 | The Race Train event had been the climax of the programme and although there was one more race on the card , no one seemed to be much interested . |
| 4 | His hip turn had been the problem but , by yesterday , as he had a trial spin with John O'Leary , he was confident that it was back in good working order . |
| 5 | However , at out next meeting she agreed that this had been the problem . |
| 6 | If McBride had been the problem in ‘ 84 , why could n't it be Doyle in ‘ 86 ? |
| 7 | This had been the problem with The Family Reunion as well , and it was one which he attempted to solve in his next play . |
| 8 | Most hurtful and unfair of all , though , he had been the butt of jokes about his appearance for as long as he could remember — everything from his ears to his hairline . |
| 9 | Shirley had been the rebel , the self-willed , the unappeasing . |
| 10 | During the year the largest project had been the re-decoration of the Phair Hall , costing £3,766 , but Mrs. Roadnight expressed appreciation of Alistair Harley for all the general maintenance jobs he undertakes at the centre . |
| 11 | So great had been the pace of development that the Commission was also recommending that attention should be turned to the much more complicated task of establishing a genuine economic union . |
| 12 | Besides John Winchcombe , junior , who was assessed at the unusually high figure of £630 , Newbury in 1522 had three residents worth £100 or so and ten more in the £40 — £99 range , including William Dolman who had been the elder Winchcombe 's works manager ; now , at 100 marks , he might already have set up in business for himself . |
| 13 | The founder of Tiron , preaching celibacy in Normandy about 1100 , was nearly lynched by the clergy 's wives , as had been the archbishop of Rouen , no less , when promulgating a decree against them in 1072 . |
| 14 | This meant that some of the old despoblados , the deserted towns that had been the despair of the economists for two hundred years , came back under cultivation , just as in the town of Salamanca , centre of a great wheat region , the empty houses left untenanted by the recession of the seventeenth century were occupied once more . |
| 15 | Throughout Napoleon 's exile the violet had been the symbol of the Bonapartistes , for the violet was the flower which , like the deposed Emperor , would return in the spring . |
| 16 | For centuries before the arrival of Westerners it had been the symbol of the soul and of eternal life ; and for the Chinese , who traded with the southern islands long before the time of Christ , the bird became associated with the phoenix myth — which crept across the continents into the mind of medieval Europe , even before it was known that the world was round . |
| 17 | From 1066 to 1558 France had been the country that England would fight if she was going to fight anyone , but for over a hundred years that role of the perpetual enemy had been taken by Spain or — in the minds of a few people — by the Netherlands . |
| 18 | Procrastination , compromise and delay had been the response of successive governments of both political parties . |
| 19 | Neil had taken their advice , and there had been the exchange of missives which , I gathered , served in Scotland as a binding contract . |
| 20 | He left England on 27 October and two days later he lectured at Hamburg on " The Idea of a Christian Society " ; the tour , which he made with Arnold Toynbee , included visits to nine cities , but he complained later that not the least exhausting part of it had been the expectation from his hosts that lie was some kind of oracle as well as a poet . |
| 21 | Until the sixties the headquarters of the Legion had been at Side Bel Abbe s in Algeria , the country which for 150 years had been the Legion 's home . |
| 22 | Darwin at the end of one of his books wrote that according to the unchanging world of his critics , there had been the fall of man into sinfulness and mankind were forever doomed to hopelessness , whereas in his ( Darwin 's ) theory of evolution , man had come from an inferior form , and because of this continuous progress , he commands a limitless potential . |
| 23 | Ramsey asked himself whether if the electors had been the university officers without the bishop they would have regarded a man of one book as electable . |
| 24 | Mrs Cutforth had been the wife of one of their most devout followers and they were not going to approve a marriage to this worldlywise womaniser and scoundrel , however financially well endowed he might be . |
| 25 | It was , in truth , all that remained of what had been the North Pier , blown away by a great storm in the 1920s . |
| 26 | Now if it had been the north side it would have been a straight line . |
| 27 | For Brazil , which had been the US 's chief Latin American ally among surrounding neutrals in World War II , the decline of the bipolar alliance system has been part of a long , slow process of growing mutual disenchantment . |
| 28 | The determining factor in rallying some francophone countries ' previously hesitant support for this hardline Nigerian approach , according to observers , had been the US State Department 's decision to withdraw the US ambassador to Burkina after a strong protest at that country 's alleged military aid to Taylor . |
| 29 | That , of course , had been the rub . |
| 30 | Otherwise- so quick had been the retreat through the Residency , the men fighting their way back from the hospital and across the yard would find themselves outflanked and unable to reach the connecting trench . |