From the archive: The last phone boxes: broken glass, cider cans and – amazingly – a dial tone

来自档案:最后一批电话亭:破碎的玻璃、啤酒罐——令人惊讶的是——还有拨号音

The Audio Long Read

2025-04-30

32 分钟
PDF

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We are raiding the Guardian long read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors. This week, from 2022: Five million payphone calls are still made each year in the UK. Who is making them – and why? By Sophie Elmhirst. Read by Emma Powell. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
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  • This is The Guardian. Hello, I'm Faye Carruthers, host of the Guardian Women's Football Weekly.

  • Every week we bring you the very latest from the Women's Super League,

  • the FA Cup, Champions League and leagues around the world.

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  • So listen to the Guardian Women's Football Weekly wherever you get your podcasts.

  • The Guardian Archive Long Read.

  • Hi, I'm Sophie Elmhurst and I'm the author of The Last Phone Boxes, Broken Glass,

  • Cider Cans and, amazingly, A Dial Tone, which was published in The Guardian Long Read in 2022.

  • So, I started noticing derelict...

  • Phone boxes in my neighborhood years ago, there was one up the road that my daughter,

  • who was very little at the time, loved playing with.

  • She thought it was this kind of strange and wonderful thing that was on our pavement.

  • And some of these were the old red kind, some were very ugly, BT variety.

  • But all of them seemed pretty unloved and strewn with litter.

  • And the odd one still improbably worked.

  • And I wonder what they were for, I suppose.

  • They're the kind of street furniture you barely notice because you're so used to them.

  • I was curious about their purpose in an age when we communicate in so many other ways.

  • So to report the piece, I ended up doing a strange kind of tour of the country.