Example sentences of "[vb past] been the [adj] [adj] [noun] " in BNC.
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| 1 | By the week 's end the proctologist was saying that it had been the best goddamned vacation he had ever taken , and as we passed the bunkering moorings near McIllvanney 's yard I saw him take Ellen aside and I guessed he was offering her a job . |
| 2 | One tripper on 1960 had been the future Black Dwarf journalist , feminist and socialist , Sheila Rowbotham , fresh out of Yorkshire Methodist boarding school and en route to Oxford . |
| 3 | The number of deaths attributable to political violence since 1984 , according to the South African Institute of Race Relations ( SAIRR ) , had totalled 11,910. 1991 had been the second worst year since 1984 , but the figure of 2,672 for the year was 28 per cent down on 1990 . |
| 4 | The Suez debacle had been the great emblematic event for Healey , as for many others of his generation , vividly demonstrating the gulf between imperial pretence and potential . |
| 5 | Gin had been the great popular comfort of Paradise Street in her childhood , gin and tea , so she took it as someone from another background might have made a dish of bread and milk . |
| 6 | There had been the occasional martial bishops , of course , ever since Odo of Bayeux came across with the Conqueror , not least perhaps because of the knightly or aristocratic houses from which some prelates came , but also because the bishop was often the sole or wealthiest magnate present to defend an exposed region when so many others were away on continental engagements . |
| 7 | Ould Taya was supported by what had been the sole legal party , the Democratic and Social Republican Party ( Parti républicain démocratique et social — PRDS ) , and by the army . |
| 8 | She had been the first Western politician to reach the Kurds . |
| 9 | When Penguin New Writing began to incorporate photogravure illustrations in 1942 , Vaughan had been the first contemporary artist to have his work reproduced . |
| 10 | To those humans who , given mastery of space , preferred to vault across it than to linger in orbit and build there , Mars and its hurtling moons had been the first great benefit of the gift . |
| 11 | President Assad had been the first Arab leader to criticize the Iraqi invasion , but there was considerable apprehension in the West that Saddam Hussein 's emergence as a focus of anti-Western Arab radicalism might open the way to a rapprochement between Iraq and Syria . |
| 12 | It had been the first definite sign that something was wrong ; though she had been moody and withdrawn for some weeks before , he had thought this a normal reaction to her baby 's death . |
| 13 | This place had been the first German prison camp built specifically for British air-crew . |
| 14 | It was ancient , a nest of shining metal that had been the first cis-lunar colony , the first man-made world that orbited around mankind 's ancestral home . |
| 15 | China had been the largest single purchaser of US wheat for several years , buying up to 10 per cent of total US wheat production in some years . |
| 16 | Geraldine Ferraro , who had been the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 1984 , once again suffered because of her husband 's alleged connections with the Mafia and failed to win the Democratic nomination for a Senate seat for New York . |
| 17 | Saturated world markets , together with the international embargo against Iraq ( which had been the fifth largest importer of Canadian wheat in 1989 ) , meant , however , that the country 's transport and storage facilities were placed under considerable strain . |
| 18 | France had been the western European nation most opposed to American concepts of data free flow . |
| 19 | There had been the usual final frenzy to get the parks ready for festival week , and various people had been smitten with untimely summer flu . |
| 20 | Albania , which had been the only European non-participant , had expressed its desire to join and was granted observer status at the summit , but on Nov. 20 lodged a formal complaint stating that " the failure of some states to allow a consensus for Albania 's full participation … is incomprehensible " [ see also pp. 37385 ; 37746-47 ] . |
| 21 | It knew that the incident had been the only serious act of indiscipline during the strike and that Wilson had used it in his speech to taunt and smear the Ulster people . |
| 22 | It had been Eleanor , quiet , firm , devoted whom Dorothea had loved , and Eleanor had been the only living person whose presence she could bear when Hallam died a year after their coming to Haverstock . |
| 23 | Experience was regarded as " limited " in variety if among the youngest age group it was little or nothing ; among unmarried subjects over the age of 20 if there had been no sexual intercourse nor other stimulation to orgasm by another person ; and among older or married people if sexual intercourse , with its preliminary manual love-play , had been the only sexual activity . |
| 24 | The Yemen Socialist Party ( Ali Salim al-Bid s. -g. ) , which had been the dominant political power in South Yemen prior to unification , remained a force in the unified Republic . |
| 25 | The immediate post-war years had been the last classic period of the film as social sermon and one can almost sense the relief as the studios discovered that social context did not need quite as much emphasis . |
| 26 | Finally , there had been the last few months , when everything had fallen apart with such shattering swiftness . |
| 27 | There had been the natural initial shock of disbelief at hearing of the unexpected death of any person even casually known . |
| 28 | Yet Filmer had n't chosen to sit at their table ; it had been the random fortuitous decision of Daffodil . |
| 29 | He had been the original Chief Pilot of Hillman Airways , and was very experienced . |
| 30 | For several centuries , Christianity had been the unifying political religion of the Franks . |