Example sentences of "had been the " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | Phipps 's latest conquest — he rarely went long without excitement — had been the childless and bored Mrs Venables , whose cake was the last he 'd tasted , and whose husband was the local chemist . |
| 2 | Henry Phipps had been the chief celebrant at this particular form of ‘ get-together ’ , and now someone had brought his priapic revels to a rather spectacular end . |
| 3 | In previous years the competition cakes had been auctioned off to benefit the Belltower Restoration Fund — and that had been the intention this year , too — but there would be no bidders , now . |
| 4 | She came up to me with , I noticed , slightly less bounce in her step than there had been the previous day . |
| 5 | The squad I ran became what can only be described as more ‘ disordered ’ and ‘ polluted ’ than had been the accepted norm , and we exhibited many verbal and nonverbal signals of this divergent nature . |
| 6 | Who , if anyone , had been the spies ? |
| 7 | Kermode sees this change — which is at the heart of what I am writing about — as having radical implications for letters , comparable to such things as the advent , first of printing and then of cheap paper ; the bourgeoisie 's greater leisure for private reading ; and the abandonment by circulating libraries of the three-volume novel , which had been the favoured vehicle for fiction during much of the nineteenth century : Kermode exaggerates a little , I think ; nothing in the establishment of university English is as important as the innovations in culture and technology which established the book in its modern form . |
| 8 | All agreed that the tactical decision on whether to go east or west at Cape Finisterre had been the key to success . |
| 9 | Newman came to the answer Rome ; the former friends he left behind in the Church of England replied that the early undivided Church had been the only one wholly to contain this supernatural essence . |
| 10 | Until yesterday the favourite to partner McMahon had been the 22-year-old Michael Thomas of Arsenal , who has only made one appearance for England : a disappointing debut in Saudi Arabia late last year . |
| 11 | Car sales had been the one area of consumer spending undented by the Chancellor 's high interest rates strategy . |
| 12 | She had no formal education at all and was brought up by her paternal grandmother at Myrtle Grove , Youghal , which had been the home of Sir Walter Raleigh when he was the Governor of Ireland . |
| 13 | Rob McKinnon had been the only Hartlepool player not pilloried in that game , and the 23-year-old left-back was the most impressive player again . |
| 14 | The Suez debacle had been the great emblematic event for Healey , as for many others of his generation , vividly demonstrating the gulf between imperial pretence and potential . |
| 15 | This had been the routine during the landing at La Breche and the advance to the Orne bridges . |
| 16 | Two-thirds of this was raised through excises , which had been the most common method in the late Tsarist period . |
| 17 | One of the main reasons for the introduction of NEP had been the peasants , ability to throttle the industrial towns of European Russia by withholding food supplies . |
| 18 | Under the previous rules fourteen hours had been the maximum shift allowed . |
| 19 | Thus , in 1969 he had been the main Cabinet instrument of dissent in rejecting Wilson and Mrs Castle 's proposed statutory incomes policy . |
| 20 | The first oilfield to come on stream had been the small Argyll field in mid-1975 , followed by pipeline deliveries from the Norwegian ‘ Ekofisk ’ field and the massive British Forties field later that year . |
| 21 | Prosperity , too , had been the product of small enterprises and a lengthy consumer boom financed by credit . |
| 22 | He had been the head of Labour 's Research Department at the time of the 1945 election . |
| 23 | For 130 years after 1558 every archbishop had been the head of an Oxford or Cambridge College . |
| 24 | Ramsey asked himself whether if the electors had been the university officers without the bishop they would have regarded a man of one book as electable . |
| 25 | At least the European Communities Act , if I remember rightly , had been the subject of a debate or two . |
| 26 | The proceedings of Sir Paul Scoon after the American invasion were just as revolutionary — meaning validated by force not law — as had been the proceedings of the superseded military regime . |
| 27 | suddenly , musicians can be working with engineers , producers and a whole host of technical equipment which previously had been the stuff of their dreams . |
| 28 | It was , in truth , all that remained of what had been the North Pier , blown away by a great storm in the 1920s . |
| 29 | Samuel and Maclean had been prominent in the Asquithian wing of the Liberal Party while Baldwin , Hoare , and Neville Chamberlain had been the leaders of the Conservative anti-coalitionists in 1922 . |
| 30 | Radical Conservatism had been the product of Conservative powerlessness and despair , and it receded with the onset of Conservative power and hope . |