Example sentences of "it was they " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | After all , it was they who tended to be the main victims of burglary , assault , and other forms of violent crime . |
| 2 | He discovered , for example , that laboratory technicians at Fawley were carrying out chemical tests without really understanding what it was they were doing . |
| 3 | It was they who formed the core of the strikers , persuading and supporting other weaker women . |
| 4 | It was they , shamingly , who had led the great discovery of old Germanic literature , which included the Old English texts Beowulf The Wanderer , The Seafarer and the great rhythmical prose-sermons of Aelfric and Wulfstan . |
| 5 | People forget that it was they who freed the country from Pol Pot , otherwise many more would have died than the one million who were starved , tortured , and executed between 1975-78 . |
| 6 | The Romans were always good at finding a sheltered and beautiful site and it was they who first settled here . |
| 7 | They said it was different : but they were wrong ; it was they themselves were different , the Morgans never changed . |
| 8 | The spinners Padmore , Jumadeen and Imtiaz Ali did the bulk of the bowling and , as far as Lloyd was concerned , it was they who had let him down . |
| 9 | It was they who were scrutinized by Orwell , the Pilgrim Trust and other social investigators . |
| 10 | It was they whose immediate vision was one of attempting to escape from the grind of poverty , and whose children were confined to the lowest levels of education offered in the elementary schools and the secondary , or ‘ post-Hadow ’ , schools . |
| 11 | It was they who bought the new consumer items produced by the new industries and who , as already suggested , were the first to practice family limitation on a significant scale . |
| 12 | Likewise Caroline Bynum , in Holy Feast , Holy Fast , her book about medieval women religious , pours a rigorous historian 's scorn on the idea that the extreme penitential fastings of some of these women can really be diagnosed as anorexic , or as any other sort of neurosis ( as proposed for example by Rudolph Bell in Holy Anorexia ) : not merely are the case histories inadequate , but these women 's understanding of their bodies , of their relationship to Christ , of their right to participate in his sufferings , of their sense of identity , their very selves , was formed in a social environment so different from our own that nothing is to be gained by reading off their lives in this way rather than exploring in proper detail what it was they did feel and think . |
| 13 | I remember Geoff telling me this , tears streaming down his face , marvelling at how it was his children who had the strength to carry on , and that it was they who had this practical , yet profound way of reaching to the heart of the matter . |
| 14 | It was they who were the defenders , not the aggressors , the men pushed by fear of extermination into acts which they knew came dangerously close to that disturbance of the social order which was almost as much to be feared . |
| 15 | That concept of authority deriving from God was , above all , the claim of the bishops of Rome and , as their influence grew , it was they who nourished the idea of a unitary empire . |
| 16 | It is the cattle dealers and butchers of the town who are of most interest to us , for it was they who took the dog of Rottweil and turned him to their use with great effect . |
| 17 | It was they who caused a reluctant minister to accept , in 1963 , the introduction of an examination at 15 + other than O level ( the CSE examination ) specifically designed for the next 40 per cent of the ability range below the 20 per cent for whom 0 level was thought to be appropriate . |
| 18 | It was they , with the largest of the teachers ' unions , the NUT , who were largely responsible for the establishment of the Schools Council , to advise and experiment in respect of curricular content . |
| 19 | ‘ I say them two or three times and it became more obvious each time I say them that they had a real understanding of what it was they were trying to do musically . |
| 20 | For economic or social reasons ( plus a sweet tooth ? ) it was they who seem to have made the biggest dietary switch from meat , fish and wild plants to largely maize , which , being rich in carbohydrates , caused their teeth to decay more markedly than before . |
| 21 | These older Shetlanders seemed to create the incomers ' links to the community , in the sense that it was they who helped to forge the reputations attributed to these incomers . |
| 22 | In the 1060s and 1070s Sicily fell to the Normans , and it was they who eventually captured Palermo in 1072 . |
| 23 | She hesitated , torn between the unaccountable shyness she always felt in Louise 's presence and the overwhelming desire to be in on whatever it was they were giggling about , even if she was only a barely tolerated spectator . |
| 24 | ‘ Maybe , ’ Phillis said , ‘ it was they were mad we had nothing much tae rob . ’ |
| 25 | He despised homosexuals , and although there were plenty of other sexually depraved aristocrats around at the time , he was unfortunate enough to have married into a family ( the Montreuils ) who had strong court connections , and it was they who made sure that he was jailed , partly to get him off their backs ( so to Speak ) and partly as an example to others . |
| 26 | Although it was Dorothy who had come to interview the officials at PopCon ( ’ an Intergovernmental Agency for Fundamental Research into the Worldwide Problems of Population Stabilisation' ) , she kept getting the impression that it was they who were interrogating her . |
| 27 | Whatever it was they were after , it was an unknown quantity , unknown , that is , except for a lethal ferocity . |
| 28 | Whatever it was they went into the sea for , it was found way down in its ice-cold black depths . |
| 29 | But throughout December it was they who slaved away — or at least Ruth and Ellen did . |
| 30 | JB : Just working alongside these people , and seeing them being involved in whatever it was they were doing was stimulating in a strange sort of way , and kept us on our toes . |