Example sentences of "[noun sg] it [vb past] be " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | He had not observed that , from the gale it had been , it had risen through level after level of violence to a power that no man living on Orkney had ever experienced or was to experience again . |
| 2 | Vi looked again at the letter half-hidden behind the sepia vase on the kitchen mantel and wondered bitterly whose fault it had been . |
| 3 | The squash racquets , the Pope 's pronouncements , whose fault it had been their first night together , an afternoon really , but not much good in either case , the squash racquets again , the money spent on Grace . |
| 4 | Finally she chose a plump boiling fowl , in deference to that great Gascon King of France , Henri Quatre , whose ambition it had been to see that all his subjects were well fed enough to have a chicken in their pot each week , and had made La Poule Au Pot a loved and traditional name for restaurants . |
| 5 | Technically , says Mr Nearn , it was not a big step for Caterham to move into manufacturing the car it had been selling and marketing for years . |
| 6 | By daylight it had been a sculptured shaft fluted with runnels of light and darkness , withdrawing stage by stage in charmed proportion , shedding weight and gaining impetus as it soared . |
| 7 | It was , by Hong Kong 's modest standards , a substantial demonstration , and the nerve it touched was quickly apparent . |
| 8 | Even more revealing of Baldwin 's personality than The Times letter and the action it announced was the note which he wrote immediately afterwards to John Davidson , who despite a twenty-two-year age gap had become and was to remain one of his closest friends : |
| 9 | After the Queen 's Speech at the opening of the new session of the Stormont parliament , it criticised the failure of the Government to give any commitment on a universal franchise and the Special Powers Act , but the only action it proposed was a low-key educational programme . |
| 10 | Ever since the proxy marriage it had been so . |
| 11 | But George Burt made a lasting impression on the place , after which it was no longer the old-world village it had been . |
| 12 | What small political influence it possessed was confined to the immediate post-war years of social tension , inflation and unemployment . |
| 13 | Prior to the 1980 Act it had been observed that the law had been ‘ heavily weighed in favour of the local education authorities and schools with parents having few rights ( although many duties ) and little say in the decision-making process ’ . |
| 14 | During the 1960s the scheme was widened to include more categories of workers and the financial assistance it provided was also considerably raised . |
| 15 | This had a separate entrance and had been used for many purposes — the storage of deeds by the Wilts and Dorset Bank , prior to this by Mr. Peru , a solicitor , but when I was a small boy it had been leased to The Haunch of Venison Inn as a wine store and bottling plant . |
| 16 | But when the portents continued to gather that autumn , and ruling the kingdom grew further and further from the planned exercise it had been and more like taking a fleet out in freakish , untoward weather , there was a change in Thorfinn as well : the extra swiftness , the finer edge , the sharper zest created by danger . |
| 17 | An act of defiance it had been , and look where it had got her . |
| 18 | The centre ground of British politics remained the same uncertain terrain it had been ever since 1918 . |
| 19 | Yet it would seem that Lenin well understood the kind of mediation that would be required between bureaucracy and the working class and that this is shown by his emphasis on the need to prevent the bureaucracy emerging under socialism as the privileged social stratum it had been under capitalism . |
| 20 | Even with side stitches taken out of work it had been more than my machine and yarn wanted to tackle . |
| 21 | By the time of Fritz and Hitzig 's work it had been known for nearly a century that electrical stimulation of nervous tissue would produce movements . |
| 22 | But then it was a creature of its time , and its time and the work it did were about the last election , not the next one . |
| 23 | For him , an established and stable state was a necessary condition for the satisfaction of men 's desires ; the peace it offered was its rationale and justification . |
| 24 | As a child it had been embarrassing and as both teachers and playmates had looked askance at the familiarity she 'd reverted to the ubiquitous ‘ Mum ’ in their presence , but woe betide her if she had lapsed into this form of address in Margaret 's presence ! |
| 25 | What a peculiar exchange it had been : herring for the table against tableware . … |
| 26 | During the war it had been stored ( for safety ! ) in the crypt of St Paul 's Cathedral , where it suffered from the effects of high explosive . |
| 27 | During the course of the war it had been the privilege of Fleet Street and , to an even greater extent , the BBC to proclaim what it was that ordinary men and women felt about certain issues . |
| 28 | During the war it had been a dangerous neighbour , but no bomb had fallen on it , although fire-bombs had spattered all over Mouncy Street and Decimus Street . |
| 29 | Since the new hospital had not been large enough from the moment it had been built , prefabricated huts bred fissiparously , and straggled now under the shadow of the main building . |
| 30 | One moment it had been there , and the next ? |