Example sentences of "had been [v-ing] for [adj] years " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | I am convinced that stuff had been accumulating for many years in this cellar and that Ernest Griffiths had no idea what was in there . |
| 2 | The US and North Korean governments had been communicating for several years at a low level through the US embassy in Beijing . |
| 3 | A report to the meeting said services to the region had been deteriorating for several years , with fewer trains running at less flexible times . |
| 4 | A report to the meeting said services to the region had been deteriorating for several years , with fewer trains at less flexible times . |
| 5 | Eve had n't known that Birdie Mac who ran the sweet shop had a man from Ballylee who had been calling for fifteen years , but she would n't leave her old mother and the man from Ballylee would n't come to Knockglen . |
| 6 | By the time he and Norman strode out to try to win the 1986 British Open , Bender had been caddying for eighteen years , having picked up his first serious bag when he was 18 years old . |
| 7 | These solutions , which involved old technology , simply applied to the ocean freighter what railroads and truckers had been using for 30 years . |
| 8 | The group had been meeting for two years , and it was mainly a consciousness-raising group , although , with only about twenty groups in London as a whole , some of them , the ‘ housewives ’ , the women who worked part-time were also able to help run the voluntary rota in the central London office , the Women 's Liberation Workshop . |
| 9 | The Old Stopfordians ' Association had been trying for many years to raise sufficient money to build the Pavilion , and indeed had sold the Harrison Towns field some three years previously for this very reason . |
| 10 | I took a drink from one of the twenty-four plastic gallon containers which I had been collecting for two years . |
| 11 | After his exit from Monday 's semi-finals , Black revealed that he had been struggling for five years with a ‘ bio-mechanical ’ problem which affects his body balance and leads to other injuries . |
| 12 | All had been festering for many years . |
| 13 | Reagan hammered away at themes which he had been developing for some years and which would be wheeled out every time he ran for public office . |
| 14 | Hart , a big man with a beard , had been teaching for nineteen years . |
| 15 | Friends say she never recovered from hearing Gilbey , who she had been dating for two years , tell Diana he loved her — 53 times in the 23 minute call . |
| 16 | Bernard and Laura escaped on to their sailing boat for much of the summer , a yacht they had been enjoying for some years now , and they pottered around Mykonos in Greece . |
| 17 | Essentially the case involved a youth leader of the Red Cross , who admitted joining the Red Cross to bring him closer to young girls , whom he had been abusing for thirty years . |
| 18 | Intending to be a priest of the Church of England , I lost my faith , slowly but painfully , and at the end of the summer left Oxford and the house in Norham Gardens in which I had been living for two years and in which , by a curious turn of fortune , my office now is . |
| 19 | Another , a woman who was living , and had been living for many years in , in continuous adultery ! |
| 20 | Roddy Lou Thai was not pleased at all to be questioned by two representatives of the repressive Imperialist Government , under whose chauvinistic wing he had been living for four years . |
| 21 | Philip Larkin had already published two novels — Jill ( 1946 ) and A Girl in Winter ( 1947 ) — before he established himself in 1955 , with The Less Deceived , as the best poet of his generation ; and John Osborne 's first play ever to reach the public theatre , Look Back in Anger ( 1956 ) , was written by an actor untouched by academia who had been writing for several years and a stranger to all of them . |
| 22 | Lisa had been smoking for twenty years and felt unable to stop for more than a day . |
| 23 | The garden city lobby alleged that the vested interests of London had worked against a decentralist approach , for which it had been striving for many years , and F.J. Osborn acknowledged in correspondence with Lewis Mumford that the Plan was a bitter disappointment to him and the Town and Country Planning Association ( TCPA ) : |
| 24 | The London General Omnibus Company had been experimenting for some years and , in 1910 introduced to the streets of London , their ‘ B ’ type , petrol engined , double-decker , opened top buses . |
| 25 | Nevertheless the king had restored to government and policy-making an element of continuity and decision which had been lacking for many years . |
| 26 | She had been flying for twelve years , had studied with her father who flew Concorde as a senior British Airways captain , and had soloed on her seventeenth birthday . |
| 27 | This was Peter Lorre 's first film but he had been acting for ten years in a career which had begun with his running away from home at the age of 15 and which bore many similarities to the careers of other American and European actors who had arrived in Hollywood already . |
| 28 | In the end , Clara , exasperated beyond endurance , brought up once more the possibility of cremation ( not daring to mention , even in her own mind , which had not quite forsaken filial tenderness , the possibility of the once-praised dust cart ) and Mrs Maugham , square , immutable , said quite astonishingly for her , and invoking sanctions she had been deriding for thirty years , that ashes must go to ashes and dust to dust . |
| 29 | Mark Turnball , one of the business partners behind Lemmings , said the firm had been running for two years , organising events in many parts of the country . |
| 30 | Unit trust savings schemes had been running for 20 years , but investment trust savings schemes did not start until 1984 . |