Williams herself toiled at the BBC for 30 years before gaining what is arguably the most important job in British radio. She joined in 1976, and went on to be producer of The World Tonight and editor of The Week in Westminster, before rising to be director of English language output for the World Service. But she also took five years away from work after the birth of her children Jack, who is now 28, and Hannah, 26. “I think that generally, women tend to come through professionally and shine a little later than men, because they often have that sort of mid-life point,” says Williams.
She is at her most animated when discussing her new cultural initiatives for Radio 4 in 2013, which will kick off with a week-long series presented by Melvyn Bragg. There will be a George Orwell season, including his own radio dramatisation of Animal Farm, and 15-minute dramas based on Elizabeth Jane Howard’s four Cazalet novels, which will likely run at 10.45am in intermittent blocks of two or three weeks for each book from February.
She continues: “We’ve got a history of European fictional detectives with Mark Lawson, and at the same time we’re going to run [Swedish fictional detective] Martin Beck, who is the inspiration for all this Scandinavian stuff.”
Williams also defends the programme that many listeners hold dearest of all – The Archers. Many have complained that it is becoming too sensationalist, after being run for four months by John Yorke, the EastEnders supremo. “I don’t think so,” says Williams. “It will have a bit of a fresh take on things, without a doubt, but The Archers has got its core [audience] and you go with the grain – you’d be mad not to do that.”
This traditionalist approach is a far cry from what loyal listeners feared would happen last year, when a report from the supervisory BBC Trust demanded that the station should chase younger listeners and those from ethnic minorities. One recommendation was to “develop the general tone of the station… towards spontaneity and conversation”. So, 17 months on, what changes has Williams made as a result?
“I have done nothing specifically to address that recommendation,” she says, “because what I will do on Radio 4, what Radio 4 has to do, is retain the highest possible quality. Now I do think that knowledge worn lightly is much more appetising than a very old-fashioned style and tone.”
To back up her point, Williams says that she sees Radio 4’s competitors as not just other radio stations, but newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph, and cultural institutions such as the British Museum. Indeed, she borrows from Victorian poet Matthew Arnold to sum up her mission. “What I have to do,” she says, “is to put on the air, in the most enjoyable and brilliant way possible, the best that has been thought and said in the world.”
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