ABSTRACT
Sometime during the late autumn of 1932, Geoffrey Dawson, veteran editor of The Times and distinguished fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, disclosed the existence of a previously unknown treatise in contemporary political science. Intriguingly entitled Government by Mallardry: A Study in Political Ornithology, this peculiar tract revealed how his majesty's government contrary to the fallacious opinion of 'the common run of the king's subjects', who fancifully believed that the 'governed themselves' was, in fact, 'guided by a flock of Mallards'. The mallard is the mythical symbol of All Souls. Those 'mallards', on closer inspection, turned out to be its fellows. They were openly acknowledged in this account as 'habitues' of what was then widely conceived to be one of 'the most exclusive societies in Europe'. But that rendered them neither subverters of democracy nor a threat to the common weal. To the contrary, they were men guided by a 'peculiar public spirit', rooted in a 'singularly disinterested creed'.
