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Hello and welcome to the Spectator's Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator.

And this week, my guest is Judith Flanders, whose most recent book,

just out in paperback, is called A Place for Everything, and it tells the curious history of

alphabetical order. Judith, welcome. Alphabetical order is something that's so kind of ingrained,

as you explained in your introduction, so habitual to us, that it's practically

invisible. But it isn't an automatic thing, is it? I mean, as your history shows, it wasn't

people's first recourse. It's a relatively recent invention. Well, it wasn't people's first

recourse. And equally, it's not our first recourse. What I discovered looking at

different sorting methods was they're all invisible. The only ones that aren't invisible are the

ones that are so bizarre that we just stop and stare and point and laugh. But in the old days when we had telephone directories,

we think, well, of course, they're alphabetical order.

We don't need to think.

But of course, they're not.

They're geographical first.

If you're looking up a number in Aberdeen,

you don't look in the London Telephone Directory.

After that, they then divide into occupational, residential or commercial.

Only then do they go into alphabetical order.

So although we say alphabetical order is our primary sorting method, very often it's second or third level down.

And the only difference between now and the bulk of history is that it is second or third level down, whereas in the past they tend not to use it at all, or at most used what was called first letter sorting order,

which is simply all the books by authors whose name begins with A go over there,

...