Example sentences of "it had [be] the [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | It had n't been a night they had lived through ; it had been the Dark Ages — all seven centuries of them , with wars and oppressions , visions and turbulences . |
| 2 | On their walk back it had been the dark shadows she 'd found unnerving . |
| 3 | If it had been the following week with school holidays but I , I do think you 'd be very tired the next day . |
| 4 | Ever since the post-war beginnings of the atomic dream , it had been the received wisdom that nuclear power was an unquenchable , reliable and , above all , cheap source of electricity . |
| 5 | ‘ Richard Cawston 's film could not have had a better critical reception if it had been the combined work of Eisenstein , Hitchcock and Fellini , ’ wrote the critic in the Evening Standard . |
| 6 | It had been the only Atlantic refuge available to the battleship , Tirpitz . |
| 7 | She had told no one at all but it had been the great dream of her life to go to Spain , the real Spain . |
| 8 | It had been the great achievement of the geologists to explain how , given enough time , the operation of exactly the same forces visible today could explain the enormous variety of what could be observed on the inanimate earth , past and present . |
| 9 | But it seems sad that so many did not have a more enjoyable sexual introduction , especially when for a few it had been the one and only time . |
| 10 | It had been the faintest of sounds , but it was enough to bring her slowly to her feet , alert and expectant . |
| 11 | It had been the blackest day of the war when the government announced the rationing of tea . |
| 12 | Perdita listened to her mother grinding gears and going on and on and on about how marvellously Perdita had played and how it had been the proudest moment of her life , and how everyone from Rupert to Brigadier Canford said what a great future she had and Drew this and Drew that . |
| 13 | It had been the early evening of the day after polling day , 1983 . |
| 14 | 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 . |
| 15 | It had been the best day yet . |
| 16 | It was all much as it had been the first time , only evening instead of morning ; and Emily stood by herself as before , and now he knew why , wearing his ring on another finger . |
| 17 | It had been the first time that he had really seen Sara in tears . |
| 18 | It had been the first casino in modern Russia , had operated out of a converted bedroom on the second floor . |
| 19 | 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 . |
| 20 | It had been the right thing to say . |
| 21 | It had been the right advice — Colonel Windsor knew it was — and Tubby had promised to take it . |
| 22 | It had been a difficult decision , but she was sure it had been the right one . |
| 23 | It had been the right thing to say . |
| 24 | The decision , made six months ago , to uproot herself from England and move to the Algarve might not have been easy , but it had been the right one . |
| 25 | It had been the merest afterthought . |
| 26 | I knew if it had been the other way round , if it was Robert I had to ask , he would have said , ‘ On yer bike . ’ ’ |
| 27 | It had been the Nordic states which had drawn back from the full implications of the Oslo and Ouchy Conventions of the 1930s . |
| 28 | Traditionally it had been the poor who had deferred marriage until they could become independent in an economy of the margins , but the early impact of industrialisation appears to have broken the pattern . |
| 29 | Indeed , it had been the major objection to Lamarck 's theory and to Vestiges that man was treated as an animal ; and that if such a view gained currency , people would start to behave like animals . |
| 30 | It had been the same sum for years . |