Idiomatic Prepositions — In the Throes / Midst / Thick Of (C2)

The whole organisation was, at the time of my arrival, in the of a painful and badly managed restructuring that had already cost it several of its most able people. (one word — note the spelling)

It was in the of these otherwise rather dull preparations that the first of the genuinely interesting telegrams arrived from the embassy in Vienna. (one word)

By half past two on polling day, with queues forming at three of the busiest stations, the returning officer was right in the of it and had not so much as glanced at the sandwiches on her desk. (one word)

The letters written in the of that first wartime winter, when coal was almost impossible to come by, are by some distance the bleakest she ever sent him. (one word)

Several of the remarks that were later quoted against him had clearly been made in the of the moment, during an exchange that even his opponents conceded had become unusually heated. (one word)

At the very of her fame, with three consecutive sell-out tours behind her, she walked away from performing altogether and was not seen on a public stage again for nearly fifteen years. (one word)

I am afraid you have caught us in the of moving the entire collection to the new wing, so half the galleries are closed and most of the labels are still in boxes. (one word)

For most of the decade the regional economy was in the of a recession so prolonged that an entire generation grew up assuming that this was simply how things were. (one word)

In the of the failed merger, two of the three senior board members who had championed it most loudly quietly tendered their resignations within a fortnight of one another. (one word)

In the of a single afternoon's reading in the county archive, she stumbled across three separate documents that between them overturned the accepted account of the abbey's dissolution. (one word)

The country was, by the spring of that year, in the throes a constitutional crisis whose eventual resolution would reshape the relationship between the monarchy and the elected chamber for a generation. (one word)

Could I possibly call you back in twenty minutes? You have caught me right in the of getting the children fed, and the kitchen is, frankly, a scene of total chaos. (one word)

The party found itself the throes of one of the most acrimonious leadership contests in its history just as the country was preparing to go to the polls. (one word — two letters)

The reservoir, which had been at the of its capacity only eighteen months earlier, was by the end of that extraordinary summer reduced to a cracked grey basin dotted with the stumps of a drowned village. (one word)

The most harrowing passage in the whole memoir describes the old mare in the of a difficult and ultimately fatal foaling, watched helplessly by the children through the stable door. (one word — note the spelling)