Example sentences of "had long been " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | It was the sort of route the British had long been anxious to create , an all-red one , passing through either British-owned , British-run or British-controlled territory . |
| 2 | Both were directed towards the formalist reading of literary texts , and some anglophone academics tried to minimize the strangeness of French imports by saying that la nouvelle critique was only offering a new version of what had long been familiar in the Anglo-American academy . |
| 3 | At that time hardly anyone but Winters would have named Williams in the same breath as Eliot , and it is characteristic of Winters 's perversity ( or his independence ) that thirty years later , when it had become usual to set Williams up against Eliot , Winters 's opinion of Williams had long been much less favourable . |
| 4 | The sudden chill of isolation which Britain felt in a hostile world , and the thrill of Dominion contingents serving alongside troops from ‘ home ’ , raised in new form what had long been a nagging conundrum — that the outlying parts of the Empire which Britain defended bore no appreciable share of the burden , precisely because of the fundamental political syllogism : no taxation without representation ; no representation without common responsibility ; no common responsibility without sacrifice of separate independence . |
| 5 | Eliot had long been accumulating the anthropological knowledge which would affect the literature of his own future . |
| 6 | Within the Conservative party , particularly among local activists and MPs , there had long been numerous critics of the nationalized industries and advocates of a more market-orientated economy . |
| 7 | Charles had long been interested in architecture — he had grown up with beautiful buildings and visited hundreds more all over the world ; he had read extensively on the subject and , by the very nature of the job , had seen a multitude of buildings , especially in the inner cities , that not only looked ghastly , but that people clearly found ghastly to live in . |
| 8 | The effect was explosive , and deeply embarrassing to the government 's position , which for years had been obstructive — to such an extent that Britain had long been known as ‘ The Dirty Man of Europe ’ . |
| 9 | Mr Lawson asserted that the right to a trial without delay had long been established : see Magna Carta Chapter 40 : and such a fundamental principle was valueless unless a court had power to enforce it by not tolerating abuse of its process . |
| 10 | Their main objective was to seize and hold the canal itself against the demolition attacks which had long been threatened by Gen Noriega . |
| 11 | Elaborate pricing mechanisms — the K-factors and all the rest — were set up by the government before the sell-off ; they were aimed at helping the industry , which had long been a victim of under-investment , to pay for a capital-spending programme of at least £18 billion over the next decade . |
| 12 | A survey by Hay Management Consultants estimates that boardroom pay in Britain was still rising at an annual rate of 10–14% in the last six months of 1990 , although profits had long been tumbling . |
| 13 | The poet never knew his grandfather , who ‘ had long been dead ’ when Edward first visited his father 's mother at Swindon in 1888 . |
| 14 | Edward recalls this attitude clearly among the Swindon-Welsh cronies of his paternal grandmother : ‘ They used to remark how well my father was doing , my grandfather who had long been dead having only been a fitter ’ . |
| 15 | He himself had long been a specialist in such relief when he would instantly brighten faces during his favourite tours of prisons , orphanages and nursing homes . |
| 16 | At the opposite extreme , paupers ' graves had long been unmarked ; but in between , death had been the metaphorical leveller . |
| 17 | Poor folk had long been the chief sufferers from the raids of the body-snatchers , because of the flimsy coffins and shallow graves to which their corpses were consigned . |
| 18 | The main symbol of death had long been that of the old man holding a familiar rural implement , the scythe , implying that man would be cut down when he was ripe for it . |
| 19 | Virginity , voluntary poverty , and self-denial had long been admired . |
| 20 | The Führer 's claim that his work had been sabotaged for years , and that the German war machine could run at full stretch now that the last plot had been foiled , was seen to demonstrate that the people had long been lied to in earlier statements that time was on Germany 's side and war production increasing . |
| 21 | The cultural difference between Spain and the Spanish king 's northern dominions was considerably greater than that between France and Scotland ; Scotland managed to resist becoming a permanent part of the French political hegemony , but she had long been an enthusiastic member of the cultural one . |
| 22 | At the Forest Eyre which opened before him at Windsor in September 1632 , counsel for the Crown was Sir William Noy , the Attorney-General , a learned lawyer determined to re-establish Forest rights which had long been forgotten . |
| 23 | Yet this had long been known : for example , the maxims of La Rochefoucauld , which retain their power to amuse and disturb , established conclusively that many things in human affairs are far from what they seem . |
| 24 | Certain kinds of violence had long been thought particularly un-English . |
| 25 | With this increasingly active role which Highlander was playing in the civil rights movement , it was only a matter of time until the reactionary extremism , which the blacks had long been fighting against , began to be directed at Highlander itself . |
| 26 | The new owner had long been acquainted with the village on account of his association with the Physic Garden . |
| 27 | This had evolved from the ancient single red R. gallica and had long been used in medicine . |
| 28 | Plate CCXXI of the Figures of Plants shows two roses : the variegated Damask , or York and Lancaster , had long been known and to his descriptive account of this Miller added a note on Mrs Hart 's Rose , probably a sport , with its more distinctly striped petals than the other 's rather blotched red and white ones . |
| 29 | It had long been suspected by the western powers that Russia was developing an atomic bomb , and in 1951 such a bomb was tested in the U.S.S.R. |
| 30 | Apart from the age of the property , I could tell that the bathroom wc of our refit had undergone some previous modernisation : the old high-level Burlington bell cistern had long been removed . |