“What sort of book might Satan write?’ ‘Why do people watch horror films?’ ‘Should we give up hope?’ These were three of the questions faced earlier this year by candidates seeking admission to All Souls College, Oxford, Britain’s most elite academic institution. Founded by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry Chichele, and King Henry VI in 1438, the college takes its name from All Souls’ Day on 2 November, the occasion on which Christians around the world pray for the faithful departed (in Mexico it’s called Día de Muertos, or the Day of the Dead).

The written examination set by this ancient graduate school deserves its reputation as the hardest in the world. As well as two general papers featuring questions that are impossible to revise for (such as the ones above), candidates take a further two in their specialist fields, the options being Classical Studies, Economics, English Literature, History, Law, Politics and Philosophy. In total, they sit twelve hours of exams, split over two days. From the 150 candidates who apply each year, all of whom have to be current or former Oxford undergraduates, only two gain admission. It’s the intellectual equivalent of SAS selection.

Until 2010, candidates competing for a place at All Souls also had to sit a fifth paper, writing for three hours in response to a single word: previous examples include ‘style’, ‘water’ and ‘reproduction’. According to the historian Robin Briggs, who passed in 1964 when the word was ‘innocence’, this exam was ‘too esoteric, even for Oxford’.

After the written tests, the process isn’t over. Shortlisted examinees are invited before a panel of 50 fellows to defend their answers for 25 minutes. Those who pass are rewarded with a seven-year Examination Fellowship, the most exclusive postgraduate gig in Britain. Benefits include free accommodation and meals in the college’s medieval buildings, an annual stipend of up to £15,500, and the freedom to pursue academic research or a career outside Oxford (provided academic study is also undertaken part-time). Teaching is not obligatory, although fellows set on a life in academia often take on tutoring and seminars.

As its name suggests, All Souls’s original purpose was to train future members of the clergy. Throughout the Middle Ages, its fellows and warden (principal) had two responsibilities: to pray for the souls of the faithful departed, especially those who had

died in what was later called the Hundred Years’ War, and to study theology or law in preparation for a career in the church or government. Today, All Souls’s eleven Examination Fellows represent a much more diverse array of topics – from the history of lay religion on the Iberian Peninsula to the student protests of 1968; from game theory to the relationship between dance and poetry.

The modernisation that has occurred over the centuries hasn’t always been welcomed within college walls. Jerry Cohen, an All Souls political philosopher from 1985 to 2008, once opened a paper with a joke: ‘“Professor Cohen, how many fellows of All Souls does it take to change a light bulb?” “Change?!?”’ Warden John Sparrow only reluctantly agreed to the appointment of Ghanaian philosopher William Abraham – the college’s first African fellow – in 1959; he was apparently amused when a servant said that he found it hard to see Abraham against the dark wooden furniture. American philosopher Susan Hurley became the first female fellow in 1981, a development that was resisted by the college’s more reactionary members. The geneticist E.B. Ford, upon running into an early female fellow, swung his umbrella at her and shouted ‘Out of my way, henbird!’

Arcane customs still form an integral part of college life. Gowns are mandatory at dinner, before which the warden (since 2008 the economist Professor Sir John Vickers) says grace in Latin. Fellows are encouraged to attend at least 28 dinners per term, in order to stay connected with the place. According to David Edmonds, biographer of the All Souls philosopher Derek Parfit, if you ‘order Marmite for breakfast […] it will arrive in a jar with a silver screw top on a small silver tray’. Tea and freshly baked cakes are served every afternoon in the Smoking Room, and a ‘scout’ cleans fellows’ rooms.

All Souls’s most eccentric tradition is the ‘Mallard Song’, sung twice a year in remembrance of a huge duck that’s said to have flown out of the foundations during construction. Once a century, fellows launch a ‘mallard hunt’ in the grounds – a torchlit parade led by a ‘Lord Mallard’, who’s carried in a chair and wields a stick with a wooden duck attached to it (it used to be a dead duck). Philologist Martin Litchfield West was the last Lord Mallard in 2001; one wonders in what ways, if at all, this mysterious institution will have changed by the time the next one occurs in 2101.