Example sentences of "had [not/n't] been a [adj] [noun] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | Who knows how long that fly might have lived if there had not been a battered ruler lying to hand . |
| 2 | But the common story , so far as we can tell , was of a prospering contado helping a few of the citizens to be successful merchants , carrying local market goods and some from longer distances ; and if Francis ' father had not been a successful merchant trading into France , the saint would not have borne the name he did , nor suffered the intense reaction to his father 's worldly values which helped to inspire him on the path to poverty and heaven . |
| 3 | It had not been a serious proposition . |
| 4 | The killing had not been a rational act ; when he did it , Alex Household had been mentally ill . |
| 5 | It had not been a pleasant summer . |
| 6 | Priestley was to recall Payday as being a remarkable film but of course it had not been a typical Chaplin film . |
| 7 | He had been out and was coming in , although the way he walked suggested that going out had not been a great success , and that not much awaited him at home . |
| 8 | Patrick had not been a demonstrative man . |
| 9 | It had not been a good day for liberal ideals . |
| 10 | It had not been a good day for the Magistrate . |
| 11 | Yet ‘ the labouring poor ’ had not been a mere assembly of disparate groups . |
| 12 | The Firth was much broader here than at Dalmeny and , if it had not been a clear day , Corbett could have almost believed they were out on the open sea . |
| 13 | By a sort of transposed assumption based on post-war experience Acheson had told the National War College in December 1947 that for Greeks , Italians and others it had not been a free choice whether they accepted or rejected communism : because they were being coerced either by an internal organization financed by other countries or by external pressure to adopt a system of government which had the inescapable consequence of inclusion in the system of Russian power . |
| 14 | But it had not been a smooth process . |
| 15 | Since he had not been a public figure before the war , the mass of French people had no idea what he looked like . |
| 16 | Alistair had not been a published screenplay writer long enough to respond to , or even recognize , this graphic proposition ( though he did keep the telephone number she threw at his feet ) . |
| 17 | We flew back to Heathrow ; it had not been a happy trip for me , full of niggling and snide remarks . |
| 18 | Nevertheless , it had not been a happy visit . |
| 19 | Would he have ‘ lost his self-control ’ if she had not been a mature person ? |
| 20 | They had gone out together but there had not been a sexual relationship between them as Faye had been unwilling to sleep with Harris , said Mr Chadd . |
| 21 | FOX : There is something in thy person that attracts everyone 's notice , but if a sack had not been a profane thing it would have become thee almost as well . |
| 22 | The unlucky 4–0 defeat at home to Alborne showed great promise for the future and if it had not been a mathematical impossibility since the beginning of October , I would have said that playing like that we should still be promotion contenders . |
| 23 | James Clappison , Yorkshire South , said Mr Heath 's intervention in the campaign had not been a conspicuous success . |
| 24 | It had not been a pretty sight . |
| 25 | He had glanced in the washroom mirror and it had not been a reassuring sight . |
| 26 | Despite its enormous membership , the LNU in the 1920s had not been a popular movement — it did not see its function primarily as campaigning to change Government policy . |
| 27 | It had not been a large legacy . |
| 28 | Yet Draper failed to mention that , in his exegesis of Scripture , Augustine had not been a hide-bound literalist . |
| 29 | It had not been an easy concept to grasp at first , but ‘ we 're getting better at being businessmen , ’ Mr. Lockley said . |
| 30 | It had not been an auspicious start to the year . |