Example sentences of "had been a [adj] figure " in BNC.
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| 1 | Sources in Banjul suggested that he was accused of mishandling the allocation of land for tourism development ; he had been a controversial figure since the end of 1988 when he was alleged to have sold donated drugs to the government . |
| 2 | Primakov was a chief advisor to Gorbachev on Middle Eastern affairs , had been a central figure in Soviet diplomacy over the Gulf crisis , and , together with former Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze , was seen by observers as one of the architects of the " new thinking " in Soviet foreign policy . |
| 3 | When Sandison had last seen him he had been a sad figure , a man approaching old age , tired , dishevelled and drunk . |
| 4 | But the similarity goes further : Miltiades had been a great figure in the early colonial days of Athens : his pocket principality in the Chersonese was in the van of Pisistratid expansion ( for good relations between the tyrants and Miltiades in the 520s see the archon-list ML 6 = Fornara 23 , belying Herodotus : Miltiades had held high office under the tyrants ) . |
| 5 | Parker , after all , had been a key figure in helping Forest reach four Wembley finals over the previous three seasons . |
| 6 | In spite of the strong antagonisms he had aroused , he had been a key figure in the religious and political reorientation of Evangelicalism and in its forging of an alliance with the resurgent Conservative party around the defence of the Protestant Established Church . |
| 7 | Koutsogiorgas , 68 , who had a heart attack in court on April 11 and died in hospital on April 18 , had been a key figure in governments formed by the Panhellenic Socialist Movement ( Pasok ) under Papandreou from 1981 to 1989 . |
| 8 | And Ben had been a shadowy figure representing that other world ; the world into which Johnny could not pass . |
| 9 | On Aug. 3 police in south-west France arrested Stanislao Villanueva Herrera ( also known as Txapu ) whom the authorities claimed had been a leading figure in ETA since the arrests of other leaders in March [ see p. 38823-24 ] . |
| 10 | And this ‘ vague altruism ’ apparently permeated up to the highest levels in government : for example , Neville Chamberlain , who had been a leading figure in the pre-war National Government 's denial of the problem of child malnutrition , was so shocked by the stories of the children 's condition that he commented to his sister , ‘ I never knew that such conditions existed , and I feel ashamed of having been so ignorant of my neighbours . |