Example sentences of "had been a [adj] [adj] [noun] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | Twenty years ago , it had been a cosy Victorian hostelry , seldom visited except by its regulars , with an open fire in winter and horse brasses polished to whiteness hung against the black beams . |
| 2 | Whatever else he was , he was not in love with Janice — unless that moment in his office had been a mere innocent slip . |
| 3 | But up to then it had been a right mild winter . |
| 4 | It had been a long hot day on the farm where I help my father with his large dairy herd . |
| 5 | And it was , had been a long weary road for these two women as they travelled back to Bethlehem , with their own thoughts and their fears . |
| 6 | Although there had been a long established tradition of community and private forestry schemes , it was not until the launching of the Saemol Undong ( or New Community Movement ) in 1970 that it was possible to conceive of a nation-wide forestry policy and programme . |
| 7 | There had been a gradual slow decline in his fortunes , his fate , his happiness and his prosperity , or prospect of prosperity . |
| 8 | It was only a few years since Schiaparelli had been a living pan-cultural matrix , a cosmopolitan crossroads of the solar system , where all the client races of Capella could co-exist in noisy harmony , or pass through , haggling , to the caravanserais of the south . |
| 9 | The scorching , clammy heat of a summer in New York had been a total physical shock . |
| 10 | Belatedly , Manville realized that going in cold , straight to the top , had been a serious tactical error . |
| 11 | In any case nobody wanted to reverse the process ; tobacco had been a pleasant commercial curtain-raiser but by the second half of the seventeenth century people in England were convinced that the real attraction of possessions overseas lay in the sugar islands . |
| 12 | She was lodged in Faulkner Square with Florence O'Connor whose mother , Bessie Murphy , had been a famous theatrical landlady ; supper on the table at eleven o'clock , a fire lit in the bedroom , a jug of hot water outside the door at eight-thirty sharp , Sundays excluded on account of Mass . |
| 13 | In fact their total experience of Spanish had been a two-and-a-half-month deep immersion course , which they had both undergone only three months before my visit . |
| 14 | It had been a glorious sunny day and he had wakened up in the morning rather early for him in those days . |
| 15 | What had been a small dark circle was a larger dark circle , with just a suspicion of smoke or steam around its edges . |
| 16 | And there was Chernayev who was a thief , and Byrkin who had been a naval Petty Officer , and Mamarev who they said was an informer . |
| 17 | Why , he kept asking himself , did a woman , trained in the art of healing , who had been a naval medical officer and not somebody 's wife , suddenly volunteer for something that was inevitably going to be highly dangerous — and almost certainly involve her in killing — at close quarters ? |
| 18 | It had been long since he had asked her mother to share his bed , and for some time now his favourite had been a young Khabiri concubine , a month younger than she was herself . |
| 19 | It had been a grand few minutes ' work . |
| 20 | It was atypical of most provincial towns in that it had been a thriving industrial centre for some time , and was taking off again after the disruption caused by the Civil War . |
| 21 | June had been a lush warm month , drawing her seeds from the ground with charmed fingers , stretching the runner beans a full four feet from their first green sprouts , and winding them neatly up their bamboo canes . |
| 22 | Kerr reported on the visit at the July meeting of the Council , drawing attention to ‘ the adverse criticisms contained in this report ’ , emphasizing that it had been a strong visiting party , and that it had reached its conclusions unanimously . |
| 23 | Serrano had not been a member of the Falange prior to 1937 , but he had been a close personal friend of José Antonio Primo de Rivera and , after the war , became a fervent advocate of his ideas . |
| 24 | There had been a great Victorian pile of a hospital there then , maybe still was unless they had demolished it , its chimney concealed inside a mock campanile . |
| 25 | There had been black bitterness , and there had been a great aching void for longer than she cared to remember now . |
| 26 | It seems that the policy of Exclusion , which had first been raised in 1673 , and which had been a major political goal of the first Whigs , had at last come to fruition . |
| 27 | The resolution of this issue , which until then had been a major sticking point [ see pp. 37259 ; 37303 ; 37379 ; 37466 ; 37535 ] , paved the way for the resolution of outstanding issues in the third round of " two-plus-four " talks on July 17 . |
| 28 | He found it was too large to be caused by a gravitational field : if it had been a gravitational red shift , the object would have to be so massive and so near to us that it would disturb the orbits of planets in the Solar System . |
| 29 | There had been a good many glasses and now he signalled to Midnight who came from the shadows by the far wall , bringing a bottle of port to refill the glass held out . |
| 30 | His fruit plantation had been a good four-hour walk from the village , and he was used to visiting it alone . |