Example sentences of "[pron] father [vb past] be " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | ‘ Because my father had been absent I immediately wanted him to become my father , but of course he could n't be . ’ |
| 2 | We discovered a strange fortuity : her mother and my father had been born in the same town of Dumfries and , moreover , we had a marriage connection — her cousin had married my cousin 's cousin ! |
| 3 | My father had been a great admirer of Kemal Ataturk — he fought in the Turkish army against the British in Gaza — and Ataturk 's picture hung in the living-room . |
| 4 | Even the cemetery was destroyed — my father had been buried there . ’ |
| 5 | As I recall , I had conveyed a plea to Miss Kenton for assistance — via a messenger , naturally — and had left M. Dupont sitting in the billiard room awaiting his nurse , when the first footman had come hurrying down the staircase in some distress to inform me that my father had been taken ill upstairs . |
| 6 | Once my father had been laid in his bed , I was a little uncertain as to how to proceed ; for while it seemed undesirable that I leave my father in such a condition , I did not really have a moment more to spare . |
| 7 | Kidlington was the village in which my father had been born in November 1886 . |
| 8 | The Headmaster , Mr. E.J. Russ had himself been taught at the school in the eighteen-nineties — my father had been one of his contemporaries . |
| 9 | Mr. Sutton was a nice old gentleman — looked distinguished with his white hair and small white beard , a stickler for accuracy and forever telling me that my father had been one of his pupils . |
| 10 | My father had been apprenticed to Mr. Cooper and he told me that the trucks had been made when trade was slack . |
| 11 | My father had been demobilised from his service with HM Minesweepers which had sailed from Chatham dockyard . |
| 12 | In the thirties , my father had been a painter and decorator , plumber , electrician , publican and boxer , but when I was growing up , he was a Spiritualist and a faith healer , talking about his negro spirit-guide , Massa , and explaining how he knew when people were cured because he felt burning coals in the palms of his hands . |
| 13 | We were allowed to live rent free in the gardener 's cottage , but the family allowance from the army was less than my father had been earning . |
| 14 | So it was obvious that my father had been thinking of this long before . |
| 15 | I had grown up believing that my father had been a great patriot who had died for Ireland , but she told me that Dermot was n't my father , and that my father was someone who hated the Irish and the idea of Irish independence . " |
| 16 | In my first book , Death and the Visiting Firemen , back in 1959 , I made my detective a schoolmaster ( as my father had been ) and was able to use a teacher 's summing-up of a class of twenty or thirty potential delinquents as a parallel for an investigator 's examining of six or so suspects . |
| 17 | In this conversation I also learned for the first time that my father had been a poor vicar . |
| 18 | Er , in so far that my father had been dismissed from the er from the coal mining industry , er before just before nineteen twenty six , and he was officially unemployed . |
| 19 | My father had been embarrassed when my mother or I had wept at the time of his leaving . |
| 20 | That she had lied to me , that my father had been betrayed by Mills and that I had avenged her husband 's memory . |
| 21 | I answered in Italian that my father had been an officer in the Austrian army and that he spoke good German . |
| 22 | I had seen him on a number of occasions during my childhood in Abyssinia where my father had been British Minister at Addis Ababa , but this was the first time I spoke to him . |
| 23 | My father had been a Christian . |
| 24 | ‘ When I was young , people used to call me up , messin' with me , tell me my father 'd been killed . |
| 25 | The smith 's shop where my father worked was reached through a doorway at the right of the carpenter 's shop . |
| 26 | I like to think I am broad-minded , but the language my father used was beyond the pale , and all because he could n't have a shave ! |
| 27 | Their father had been arrested ; their mother was isolated in an area cut off by fighting . |
| 28 | George could have laughed aloud to think how , for years , their father had been ashamed of Tamar , but now he was proud to claim kinship . |
| 29 | The usual way of coping with their father had been to make no reference to anything untoward that might have happened , for fear of bringing it all upon them again . |
| 30 | He put his arm round her , held her as she cried the tears she had wanted to cry since that evil night when their father had been murdered . |