Seamus Perry is slipping away from the drama of ‘the election’

Nominations for the Professor of Poetry are now closed, and our five contenders stand before the great institution of Oxonian democracy.

Some colleagues are offering me their predictions with an airy old-hand confidence, but their predictions do not agree, so the manner is pure donship.

The impressive list of contenders possesses both diversity and eminence, and all there is for the don to do now is to register to vote and then wait and see.

So it seemed a good idea to slip away, and as luck would have it, I had been asked to serve as external examiner on a PhD in Scotland. External examining is always good: you find yourself momentarily in that rarest of situations in which you can say no wrong.

Academic discourse is normally couched in phrases such as “well yes, but...” or “ah, but of course the trouble with that is...” or “quite so, and I believe Wittgenstein thought something very similar before realising the sheer magnitude of his error”.

But as external examiner you are beyond criticism or reproach, like a high court judge.

There are some well-tried conventions that dons sometimes feel obliged to keep up. Faced with a thesis of minute and exhaustive learning, you are expected by tradition to ask the nervous candidate, “this close detail is all very well, but tell me now – what’s the big picture?”

Contrariwise, given a thesis of the most dazzling philosophical stretch the examiner finds himself morally bound to say, “come, these big ideas are fine and good – but now, please, let’s get down to the nitty gritty”.

The candidate fields questions from the two examiners for an hour or more, knowing that they have pored over a hundred thousand of his or her words, well chosen or otherwise.

It is naturally important to get an examiner on the right wavelength.

My old tutor, the late John Bayley, was famed in Oxford for his examining technique and much in demand.

He is said to have greeted one doctoral candidate to his viva with the cheery words, “Well done, my dear, you’ve passed! Now my colleague here wants to ask you some questions” - this last uttered with a note of mild incredulity, as though the whole idea of asking questions in a PhD viva was slightly perverse.

His fellow examiner’s response is not recorded.

He could certainly affect severity. (“Missing comma on page 297.”) He looked over his glasses at a friend of mine and adopted a grilling tone: “But have you looked at Charles Reade’s most important novel The Cloister and the Hearth?” My friend stuttered a confession that, actually, he had not. An ominous spirit of possible failure filled the room. “Well”, said John, distractedly, his more usual benevolence re-asserting itself, “it must be years and years since I’ve read it”.

Later in the same viva he asked the candidate, “And have you read Rob Roy?” Here my friend was on safe ground: “Yes, I have,” he said, confidently. John looked mildly surprised, and then volunteered: “Awfully good, isn’t it?”