Book of the Week, one of Radio 4’s best-known series, is being dropped for five months next year to make room for 100 monologues from the same man: Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum. Should one person, however illustrious, displace an audio library of newly published books that changes from week to week, encompassing memoirs, diaries, biography, travel and essays?

It is an extraordinary move.

Asked if he thought there was any possibility of listeners being made restless by the same voice coming at them for five mornings a week for 20 weeks, MacGregor was unavailable for comment.

He is keeping his scholarly Scots head down. He knows it is unprecedented. We are used to monologues from the likes of David Attenborough, but they are one day a week, not five. And there are suggestions that the project has gone awry, and that he was not intended to replace Book of the Week at all.

For those who do not listen to it (or cannot, because of something called work), Book of the Week goes out at 9.45am on FM every weekday, repeated at 12.30am. Every week brings a different serialisation. Recent books have ranged from Shirley Williams to Michael Palin, MI5 to Clive James. We have heard everything from the Black Death to Oskar Schindler. Radio 4 has had a morning reading slot, which used to be at 8.45am, for decades: this is where Martin Jarvis brought Just William to life, and Adrian Mole made his broadcast debut. The last volume to be serialised before the slot enters its enforced hibernation will be Lady Antonia Fraser reading her diary on the decline and death of Harold Pinter.

After that, on January 18, comes A History of the World. This is a series of 100 talks by MacGregor: an initial six weeks, then another six weeks in the summer, and a final eight weeks in the autumn. In each talk, he will describe, and explain the significance of, a different object in his care. He had 8m to choose from. When it emerged he was embarking on this vast exercise, early last year (my colleague Richard Brooks first revealed it), it was said that the programmes would include music and the voices of others. This was entirely expected, because the narrative history series — such as David Reynolds on America and Amanda Vickery on private lives — contain those very ingredients. They avoid boring the listener. But it is said that when the finished programmes arrived at the BBC, they were simply mini lectures; Mark Damazer, Radio 4’s controller, felt they could not go out in the intended narrative history slot of 3.45pm because that would mean one uninterrupted voice following another, 3.30pm being reserved for a short story; so he switched the transmission slot to 9.45am, which meant that Book of the Week had to go.

I do not know if that is true:

MacGregor was not available for comment when asked whether he felt the programmes had delivered what had been asked. Damazer’s explanation is as follows: “The British Museum series is highly unusual, and in my view merits being put in front of a larger audience than the one available at 3.45pm. We have no plans to remove Book of the Week for anything else. I hope the Book of the Week audience forgives the temporary disruption and enjoys what I think is a terrific set of programmes.”

Is there, just possibly, a note here not only of anticipation, but of contrition?

paul.donovan@sunday-times.co.uk