Example sentences of "had [verb] [prep] first " in BNC.

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1 Mrs Bottomley said that in her South-West Surrey constituency she had heard at first hand many stories of personal anguish , crisis and despair in the last hard year .
2 The competition was to take place in August and , although she was for ever panicking about what they still could n't do , she tended to overlook how far they had come from first beginnings .
3 True , he had struggled at first to satisfy his beautiful young bride ; he had been too long a bachelor and too set in his ways .
4 The girl had struggled at first , but Bernice had reassured her : They 'll bring me to you in just a minute , she 'd said .
5 ‘ I thought that they were extinct , ’ Zach had said on first seeing her riding it .
6 " Confound it , Lovat , " she had said upon first setting eyes on Topaz .
7 This was immediately confirmed by a sound similar to that which my own shoulders had made on first entering the narrow space .
8 The Frenchman 's dark aquiline features and unsmiling silences made him think of history-book pictures he 'd seen of the warrior heroes of ancient Greece and Rome , and the dismay he had felt at first when their car had struck the Annamese villager had increased his sense of awe .
9 When he recalled how he had felt on first seeing her he had to push the sinful thoughts out of his mind .
10 Let's go and see it , he had said , and she had recoiled at first .
11 Engineers , it was often said , only carried out ideas that other people had thought of first .
12 If your household is likely to expand in any way it might be cheaper in the long run to buy a larger model than the more modest affair you had thought of first .
13 Or so he had thought at first , hearing her voice , looking round the well-furnished rooms , the shelves full of old china figures , in her polished house .
14 He was altogether too handsome , she had thought at first .
15 It had n't been much of a job after all ; he had thought at first from the sound of it that it might mean travel , but it did n't .
16 He had thought at first that the man was lost and required instructions , but realised after the words had blown away that it was a quiet inquiry for cash .
17 Thomas had thought at first that it was a shadow .
18 I wished I had got in first by telling her I no longer found her sexually attractive .
19 The earl had got in first on this wonderful anchorage , and the advantage remained with his town .
20 Downing Street had originally put in a request for the Bridal Suite , only to discover that Jeffrey Archer had got in first .
21 Though he was a college Conservative of a patriotic and nationalist kind , he had shown at first no sign of the bitter and obsessive anti-Semitism that became the hallmark of his speaking and writing .
22 Shelby did n't like Ferrari ; like plenty of others before and after , he had experienced at first hand Enzo Ferrari 's withering contempt for lesser mortals .
23 A friend indicated that the Army had seemed at first to understand when the WRAC driver said she feared other Paratroopers would victimise her for ‘ squealing ’ on their pals .
24 The reason that Schrödinger 's and Heisenberg 's versions of quantum mechanics had seemed at first sight different from each other ( see p. 14 ) was that they had chosen to use contrasting extreme possibilities .
25 Clare remembered how she had seemed at first to be constrained in all her movements and jerky , almost as if her stammer manifested itself through her body as well .
26 He quickly realised that , tactically , the situation at Verdun was not quite as desperate as it had seemed at first sight .
27 Berowne had spoken at first spasmodically , then easily , and finally intimately .
28 He also looked likely to join Sheffield Wednesday at one stage but in the end had to settle for First Division Newcastle .
29 Maslyukov had served as First Deputy Premier and chair of Gosplan , and briefly as acting Prime Minister after Nikolai Ryzhkov was incapacitated by a heart attack in late December .
30 She seemed calm enough but the fit she had thrown on first wakening was fresh in his mind .
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