Example sentences of "[noun pl] had [been] the [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | In articles in Der Sturm and Lacerbal Boccioni claimed that the Futurists had been the first to introduce the concept of Simultaneity into painting , and that Léger 's article ‘ Les Origines de la Peinture et sa Valeur Représentative ’ was really a Futurist statement . |
| 2 | Before 1920 , writes Charlie Buchan in his autobiography , ‘ the county leagues had been the happy hunting grounds for the professional clubs . |
| 3 | One of its outstanding early proponents had been the French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes ( 1596–1650 ) . |
| 4 | One of the pilots had been the ace Al Deere . |
| 5 | The marriage which he contemplated for Matilda was with one of the most powerful of the new barons of the Conqueror , Count Alan Rufus , lord of Richmond , who for twenty-five years had been the greatest man in the north of England and one of the most constant witnesses of English royal charters : a central character , therefore , in the government of England , but a potential menace in the semi-conquered North . |
| 6 | The first two years had been the hardest — there was hardly a piece of equipment in the kitchen that did n't have a hospital properly stamp on it somewhere — but things had grown steadily better since . |
| 7 | 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 . |
| 8 | Agricultural export subsidies had been the crucial stumbling block on which this round of GATT talks foundered in December 1990 [ see p. 37930 ] . |
| 9 | The kingdom of Greece had a longer history ; the Greeks had been the first subject people to break free from Ottoman rule after 1815 . |
| 10 | His eggs had been the first , to hatch on many worlds . |
| 11 | Mr Chambers ' name and virtues had been the main topic of her mother 's conversation for the last two months , and no matter how many times Honor expressed her dislike of the man , Flora continued to press the subject . |
| 12 | Prior to that , guilds had been the only groupings of workers . |
| 13 | She felt she was honour bound , as hostess , to keep the conversation going , and the mention of the poor man who had had to endure Harry Burrows moaning in a sheet beneath his windows had been the only topic to cling to her memory . |
| 14 | Irons and radios had been the only appliances owned by the majority of consumers before the War and they were joined by electric fires at the end of it . |
| 15 | 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 . |
| 16 | And the physical symptoms had been the same ; a raging thirst , her body parched and shrivelled , her mouth dry and sour as if infected with her own breath . |
| 17 | Until then cardboard tubes had been the only means of transporting and protecting artwork . |
| 18 | The crawling and wriggling carcasses had been the innocent victims of the chaos taking possession of their world . |
| 19 | Under the previous rules fourteen hours had been the maximum shift allowed . |
| 20 | Carpet manufacture and related activities had been the major provider of employment in the area up until the late 1960s . |
| 21 | If the first of the two roads had been the right one to take , that would be an end of the matter . |
| 22 | Rivers and canals had been the main means of transporting goods , particularly heavy or bulky goods , but at the beginning of the nineteenth century , railways began to appear . |
| 23 | And er there was very little money spent on the roads at that time , the , the railways had been the great carriers of everything and the motorcars were just coming in . |
| 24 | Women had been the principal agents of this effort , which had badly affected the profits of the alcohol industry . |
| 25 | They renounced the women as sexual objects , even though their desires for the women had been the original motive for killing the father . |
| 26 | The last eight miles had been the worst up to that point , and yet I had gone faster than ever before . |
| 27 | If the Jesuits had been the greatest implementers of post-conciliar renewal in the Pauline era , Opus Dei would shortly become John Paul 's most reliable institutional arm . |
| 28 | If its percentage of second votes had been the same as the overall percentage of the constituency votes it then received , it would in 1983 have been guaranteed 165 seats instead of the 23 it actually won , and 147 instead of 22 in 1987 . |