New year is traditionally the time to spot emerging talent, but there is one cultural figure who, after more than 40 years in broadcasting, is set for one of his highest-profile years yet. Melvyn Bragg, peer of the realm and novelist, will be fronting a new series for BBC2, as well as helping the digital channel Sky Arts to give BBC4 a run for its money – and tomorrow he starts a five-part, week-long radio investigation into the history of the written word as a spin-off from his highbrow Radio 4 show In Our Time.
"The new radio documentary was the idea of Tom Morris, producer of In Our Time, and it must be the fastest commission I have ever known," said the 72-year-old last week. "We had been looking around for a special to do and we wanted a really substantial subject. Once we had it, we had to be fast-moving because we could not believe no one had done it before."
Only two years ago, Lord Bragg was bidding his loyal but limited television audience adieu when ITV dropped its late-night arts programme, The South Bank Show, after 30 years. Sky Arts swooped on the franchise by staging the Sky Arts South Bank Show last year and, a month ago, revealed plans to commission a series of six hour-long South Bank Show films. Like his former ITV programmes, the new films will focus on the work of a succession of individual artists, writers or entertainers, although the subjects have yet to be decided.
"I very much wanted to continue to make The South Bank Show and I'm delighted that Sky Arts has given me the chance to do that," Bragg said in November. He likened the team at Sky Arts to those he worked with at the BBC as a young man in the early 1960s. "It is very like the buzz of Lime Grove, with short lines of decision – which is such a relief. You ask for decisions and they'll give you a yes or no very quickly," he said.
The decision to invest in Bragg and his show, which will return this summer complete with Paganini-variation theme tune, is a symptom of Sky Arts's ambition. Its budgets have been tripled and its position on the all-important "EPG" TV guide has been given a hike.
The Labour peer's new BBC2 series, on class in British society, is due to begin in early spring. "Melvyn intends to examine class – upper class, middle class and working class – through all forms of culture, with a final programme on what has happened to our ideas of class in the last 50 years or so," said Janice Hadlow, the channel's controller.
However, in the first week of 2012 Bragg will be back on air with the radio station that he worked for when it launched in the 1960s. Radio 4, encouraged by the listener figures for In Our Time – which now enjoys an audience of two million for live discussions about topics from string theory to Arabic learning from the 8th to the 14th centuries – is to broadcast five programmes about writing. Since October, every In Our Time programme (there have been more than 500) has been available to download. During the run of the series, Bragg prepares by taking his notes to bed early on a Wednesday evening. "I don't like to watch anything on TV or go out because I have homework to do."
His new programme, The Written World, tells the international story of writing and its effect on human development. "Writing started in about 3500BC," said Bragg. "And what I find amusing is that it was probably started by a clerk who was tabulating goods going in and out of a market. In other words, we owe all literature to an accountant."
Clay, the most basic household medium, soon became the commonest writing material. "It also turned out to be the most enduring of all materials. The examples they have at the British Library are beautifully clear. In fact, although we set out to make programmes about writing around the world, time and again we found that all the prime examples of the objects that show how writing gained in power are housed in England."
Bragg compares the devising of a workable alphabet to the invention of the worldwide web. Religions spread because texts could be passed around and read aloud, while propaganda and politics emerged with early printed journalism. One programme focuses on an English civil war newspaper, Mercurius Aulicus, produced on the eve of battle by Royalists as a way of unsettling their opponents. "These were ferocious publications, written fast and powered by religion and radicalism. They were full of subterfuge and were the real first draft of history," said Bragg.
The web has heralded an age of unchecked self-publishing and the widest ever access to the written word. "People may have been surprised by the popularity of In Our Time, but the interest in all these extraordinary subjects was there – even at nine o'clock in the morning," said Bragg.
"In Our Time: The Written World", runs from Monday to Friday this week at 9am on Radio 4.