Example sentences of "[conj] had [vb pp] [prep] a " in BNC.

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1 It would have made no difference if the ironmonger 's door had been shut instead of open , and the ox had pushed its way through , or had gone through a plateglass window .
2 Perhaps he had been knocked down , or had died of a heart attack .
3 Most heads could identify changes that had led to a more balanced or improved curriculum , either as a result of the purchase of additional facilities or due to a change in curriculum planning .
4 Soon after its talks with Wells Fargo fell through , Security Pacific announced that it was cutting back its international operations , once a big growth area , because of bad loans in Britain and Australia that had contributed to a $230m fourth-quarter loss .
5 Last time she had slipped out in the dark like this was on the night the Doyles had come , the night that had ended with a mystery and a death .
6 ‘ That 's the trouble with Nicky , ’ Constance told Louise after she had returned from yet another evening that had ended with a quarrel .
7 The katun , comprising twenty years of 360 days , was the most important unit of time in the Maya view , because the events in one katun were expected to approximate to those in a previous katun that had ended on a day with the same number .
8 To Karen , that had sounded like a lot of Jessica 's most harsh and brittle statements , the harshness and the brittleness barely concealing something darker underneath .
9 The Authority was less successful in its attempt to ensure that disciplinary proceedings were brought against a detective superintendent , whose early retirement from the Metropolitan Police in 1989 meant that he avoided questions about his links with drug smuggling and criminal gangs , queries that had arisen after a World in Action television programme which had made serious allegations about corruption in the London police .
10 It was the last thing in the world I wanted to do , but I could n't refuse , not after the work that had gone into a production like this .
11 After a week of fighting , the war that had begun with a thunderous high-tech blitzkrieg in the skies over Baghdad had not yet delivered visible proof of victory .
12 And while she was having a whisky and eating a piece of cake at eleven o'clock , in a hapless impulse to demonstrate and somehow fix her freebooting mood — though she saw the irrationality of it on a day that had begun with a clear insight that at least she would try to equal his thinness even if she could never hope to achieve the frugality of his expectations — just as she was leaving the last part of the cake , she would think of a better way to write the note .
13 But ten million people had died in a campaign that had begun as a summer frolic in 1914 and now ended in a shower of November rain .
14 Although the young man and Mrs H. denied rectal intercourse , it is probable that this was the site that had served as a source of the infection , which had presumably originated with her husband over a year previously .
15 The bright evening skies that had served as a backdrop for the parade of revenants had been blotted out by a darkness which entombed them once more in the grave of the past .
16 By 1991 that had risen to a quarter .
17 For all that they were wrapped in fog , the revolver that had appeared in a gloved hand was all too visible to Sergeant Joe .
18 The wing that had appeared like a church from afar was clutched in the attenuated arms of a vine , held up by the vine like a drunken dancer in the arms of a lover .
19 But all the will-power she could muster could not shut out the desolate sense of emptiness that had closed like a cold hand round her heart .
20 I told him to write down everything that had happened in a letter and send it to me .
21 Brewster was troubled , nevertheless , by another side of Newton : an alchemical passion that had left behind a hoard of manuscripts , consisting largely of transcripts from alchemical works .
22 It might be expected that where such clonal growth is possible , the struggle for existence over long periods of stable management would lead to the local dominance of single clones — those that had succeeded in a struggle for existence with others .
23 Thus began the last chapter of a case that had started as a simple bank robbery , then extended into one of murder and fraud , and drugs .
24 She went to bed in her own room , still full of pictures and possessions that had belonged to a previous and vanished Phoebe .
25 So the story , the dearly-bought exclusive , the story that had looked for a moment — just a moment — like Christine Keeler Mark 2 arrived on the desk of Sir David English , Pamella 's last editor .
26 A tall , prematurely white-haired man in a navy blue suit , with eyes that could focus on you as if you were a fly that had settled on a distant door-knob , he could dominate a large room while seated behind a desk at one end of it and without raising his voice above a conversational level .
27 He put on exquisite robes that had come as a gift from distant India , and took of vial of scented water , then mounted upon his noble steed .
28 Lotus had another go at four-wheel drive the following year , this time with gas turbine power The dramatically wedged-shaped 56B was a development of the car that had come within a whisker of tinning the 1968 Indy 500 .
29 Their so-called furnished accommodation had consisted of two old beds that had come from a second-hand shop , a brokendown settee , and a gas cooker that had probably been used all through the war .
30 Hefting a large , heavy pair of cable-cutters that had lain on a shelf , she let the first two go by .
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