Example sentences of "had been a " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | The letter-writer is an orthopaedic surgeon who was taken off a plane as he was about to make a short visit to the UK where he had been a post-graduate student . |
| 2 | The husband of the cleaning woman had been a soldier , and she had said that he had had no choice but to obey his orders to shoot Jews . |
| 3 | Already in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries , there had been a powerful alignment between rural cultural ethics and church teaching . |
| 4 | If an effective will to de-alienate Northern protestants in their attitudes to the republic existed , and if there had been a real change in the Irish catholic hierarchy 's position on such matters , then they would indeed have taken positive steps to support FitzGerald 's attempt to introduce such constitutional changes . |
| 5 | All that and more went through my mind , wrote Harsnet , as I sat there in the moonlight in the silence , but it was as if it was the glass which was telling me this , that the glass was my mind as I thought that , or my mind the glass , and that was the reason for the fear and the cold and also for the sense of growing excitement and a fear then , a different kind of fear , that I would not be able to do anything with this excitement , that it would be my failure , my failure to realize what I now saw were the real possibilities of the glass , a failure for which I would never be able to forgive myself , though a part of me would always know or perhaps only believe that it was in the nature of my insight that there could be no realization of it , that it was precisely an insight about non-realization , but by then , wrote Harsnet , it had all become too complicated , too extreme , I did not want to know any of it until it was all over , until I had made my effort , perhaps it had been a mistake to come in and sit there with the glass through the night with the moon shining so brightly , it must have been full , or nearly full , unnaturally bright anyway , something to do with the solstice perhaps , to sit in the room with the glass alone or with the moon alone might have been bearable , in the dark with the glass or in the moonlight in an empty room , but the two together , the glass and the moon , that was perhaps the mistake . |
| 6 | Mrs Doran 's husband had been a loser to Phipps , both at golf and in the bedroom . |
| 7 | There had been a rash of petty thefts in the hotel and we were all warned to be vigilant . |
| 8 | Thirty had been a party for fifty , and now had honed it down to a fabulous four . |
| 9 | Young Donald — his eyes were clear black-brown , like a lochan stained with peat , his hair was curly like a bull 's poll , and he had been a lovely lad until his father went away , clever with his hands , whittling pieces of wood and glueing them to make little windmills and watermills . |
| 10 | She hit upon a pair of corduroy breeches which would fit snugly at the waist but balloon over the hips , with highly-polished brown leather boots for a touch of chic , a maroon Italian sweater , which at 15p at a jumble sale had been a real snip , and a jaunty maroon beret . |
| 11 | Most pre-Socratic philosophy had been a form of primitive natural science , explaining everything in terms of the physical elements . |
| 12 | It had been a narrow escape and I was impressed . |
| 13 | Would I one day show people this jacket and say that it had been a lovely afternoon in Central Park when he gave it to me and , in closing , would I say that as he disappeared into the trees , I never saw Oscar Wilde again ? |
| 14 | The victims were not just the established railway enthusiast tour operators ( all but a handful of which had already been squeezed out ) but organisations such as the women 's institutes and working men 's clubs , whose annual train trips had been a tradition . |
| 15 | It had been a very different story with the earlier sell-off of the hotels where the managers ' interest had not been shown proper respect . |
| 16 | The DTI statement was made after the brewers had agreed to arbitration for their tenants — see page 11 — and some commentators claimed that there had been a trade-off . |
| 17 | If there had been a bolt on my belay at Swanage it would not have been an environmental disaster . |
| 18 | As Keith explained , it was not any easier for him to take up employment with the RAF because his father had been a career forces man . |
| 19 | Most recently , the discovery that the late Paul de Man , the doyen of American deconstructionists , had been a young collaborationist journalist in Nazi-occupied Belgium has made the issue painfully acute in the United States . |
| 20 | The professionalized academic critic wanted to forget that there had been a time when criticism was part of literature ; and the belief that criticism or theory could be literature in themselves was perhaps part of the process of exorcizing other values and attitudes . |
| 21 | He lived in 1935 ( when I last saw him ) in the utmost simplicity , although if he had been a little more conciliatory he could always have earned enough for his comfort — and his wife 's ; but he never valued anything that money could buy as he valued the integrity of his sharp-shooting mind . |
| 22 | However , it emerged last night that a reporter from London Weekend Television unwittingly tipped off residents about the raid when he phoned contacts on the estate to ask if there had been a raid — before it had actually happened . |
| 23 | Yet the Chelsea manager , Bobby Campbell , and Arsenal assistant , Theo Foley , agreed it had been a good match , and the spectators ' complaints were muted . |
| 24 | Clairmonte was a popular choice for the title first won by John Carl Grimek , America 's ‘ Monarch of Muscledom ’ back in 1948 , but his victory had been a close run thing . |
| 25 | At this point , the strain on Renee Henry 's marriage became too much , and what had been a troubled relationship crumbled . |
| 26 | Toleafoa had been a promising junior when she joined the circuit full time , just over a year ago . |
| 27 | The first game between Yusupov and Karpov had been a solid draw , with the position staying near to equality throughout . |
| 28 | It had been a fair old fitness test . |
| 29 | Mr Meacher said provided there had been a majority ballot decision trade unions must have the full protection of the law to pursue a lawful trade dispute . |
| 30 | It further alleged that he had been a ‘ fifth columnist ’ working for the Army in west Belfast in the 1970s , and had been given immunity by the RUC to carry a gun and carry out robberies . |