He's the man who reversed the decline in history students, prompting waves of copycat programming and now inspiring new TV channel UK History.

Simon Schama tells Graham Keal how the BBC was surprised to discover he was "a big fat success".

Fresh from his breakfast in the oak-panelled, book-lined lounge of the plush but intimate Milestone Hotel in deepest Kensington, Simon Schama was looking relaxed but alert in a pale, soft green shirt and black slacks. But the looks were deceptive. He was feeling "staggeringly grim".

His delayed Transatlantic flight had arrived at 4am that morning and he was mainlining black coffee with a dash of cream to kick start his system.

"Have you seen The Ipcress File, where they slap Michael Caine around at irregular intervals? Well I feel just like that - though I usually get over jetlag very well," he says.

Schama, 57, moved to America in 1980 and raised his family there, but commuting back and forth to his native London has become a habit since A History of Britain became a huge and hugely unexpected ratings hit, winning audiences of four million along with a string of awards and critical plaudits.

Schama has given history a future. His compelling, attention-grabbing yet authoritative 16-part series is credited with dramatically reversing the decline in history A-level students and degree courses.

History is suddenly TV's hot ticket, and last year history books outsold cookery for the first time. Now Schama's series has inspired a whole new channel, UK History, broadcasting free to digital households and schools from October 30.

The new channel's programming divides into four main strands - 20th Century History, Pre-20th Century History, Biography, and UK History Specials - with each strand getting a daily slot, Monday to Saturday. On Sundays, the UK History Specials sweep all before them with six hours devoted to a single theme.

But it's notable that the fledgling station is using Schama to publicise itself - his series isn't even due on it until the end of December.

"Staggering really isn't it?" says Schama, referring to the whole history phenomenon. "The great thing is, it has rippled into what television wants to do... When we and David Starkey (Channel 4's ratings-grabbing historian) were a big fat success, suddenly everything changed. There is so much more history on air now, and there's the BBC History Magazine - which wasn't there when we started.

"It's just fantastic really. And for me the great thing is that the massive decline in kids taking A-level has totally changed. That's a great vindication - the best vindication."

You might have thought vindication was hardly necessary, but you'd be wrong. Scepticism was rife about Schama's vastly ambitious project, charting British history from the first evidence of settled communities 5,000 years ago to the mid 20th century, right up until the first episodes were screened.

"We were very nervous on the day the first one came out. It's common knowledge that many people inside the BBC thought it was going to be an epic flop, a complete waste of money - but not, in the end, the people who counted.

"Alan Yentob (the then Controller of BBC2) was the hero actually, and Jane Root (Yentob's successor) was supportive when she inherited it, but we were still very nervous. There were people everywhere who thought it wasn't going to work, so the success we had was simply staggering."

It was also a great relief. When the series aired only the first eight programmes had been made. Schama had another intensive year's work on the final eight to go.

"Whatever happened we were going to go on, but if we had actually bombed and then still had to do another eight programmes it would have been appalling. Morale would have been really low. We never actually said that at the time, or even breathed it, because that way was perdition, hell."

They should never have worried. Schama's brilliant ability to boil down great swathes of history to easily digested, vividly human stories was a great hook to viewers, especially when coupled with technical wizardry and a budget big enough to bring the programme's ambitions within reach.

The combination of elements was breathtaking. When Schama covered The Black Death, for example, a two or three-minute sequence took in footage of scurrying rats, multiplying bacteria, grisly reconstructions showing blood-gurgling victims, ancient documents, ambitious graphics and a location shot from a charnel house packed head-high with human bones, all knitted together by Schama's sinuously stirring narrative.

But BBC doubters weren't the only ones worried about the project. Schama's wife Ginny, a genetics professor at Columbia University, was fearful too - she feared the job which Schama himself later called "the project that ate my life" would tear the family apart, with her absentee husband toiling on the other side of the Atlantic.

So, they made it a condition of taking on the series that the whole family - Ginny, daughter Chloe, now 19, and son Gabriel, 16, lived in London for eight months, much to Schama's delight.

"It was very moving for me, because my kids have British as well as American passports and we'd been back here practically every year because of family and friends, but they hadn't actually been part of daily life in Britain. Then they went to school in London for eight months and became passionate little Brits.

"We always thought of this project as a kind of homecoming, and that's what it turned out to be."

UK History started broadcasting on October 30 and is available on all digital platforms.