BY THE TIME you read this, the very last printing of BT telephone directories will have been delivered. There will be no more after that. Another victim of the digital age. Of course, ‘I’m in the book’ has long ceased to be a stock response to ‘What’s your number?’ but it will now be officially consigned to antiquity and an anachronism in old movies. Soon, everyone will be ex-directory.
The world’s first phone directory, a single sheet, was issued in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1878. Britain’s first directory,
