Red-faced bosses of a business directory company have apologised for a glaring error in which the name of England’s second most popular literary shrine was misspelled.

The front cover of the latest edition of Thomson, the rival to Yellow Pages, spells Haworth, the home of the Brontes, as Howarth.

It is one of five places printed on the blue cover of the Bradford Directory which also includes Skipton, Keighley, Shipley and Queensbury. About 200,000 copies of the flawed directory have been distributed across the district.

Mike Hutchinson, of Haworth Village Association, has branded the error “sheer stupidity.”

“Somebody needs their knuckles rapping. It should never have happened.

“The problem is they won’t reprint it so it will be out there perpetuating the error for 12 months.”

Haworth Parish Council chairman, Councillor John Huxley (right) said: “It’s an irritation but not disastrous. It happens quite frequently.

“I think it would be too much to ask to recall the copies and do it again, especially when considering the environmental impact of re-printing the whole run.”

Bradford Councillor Glen Miller (Con, Worth Valley) described the error as “laughable.”

“It’s bad that a directory can’t spell the name of a town it is trying to drum up business from.

“I don’t think there’s an excuse for it from a professional organisation like that. It should get it right.”

A spokesman for Thomson said the company was aware of the error and several members of the public had been in contact about the mistake. The company apologised and promised not to get it wrong again.

The error had not been repeated on the Thomson website or on the inside map of the directory.