By lunchtime today there should be a new provost of Trinity College Dublin. And the first thing I would like to do is to wish him or indeed her every success and happiness in this important position. Being provost nowadays requires a combination of skills.

The provost is both the titular head of an academic community and also the equivalent of the chief executive of a small corporation employing a significant number of people and discharging a medium-sized budget; in other words quite an onerous responsibility attaches to the job.

There are, of course, compensations: the most notable of which is the majestic address, No 1 Grafton Street. The Provost's House is a truly splendid 18th-century building and arguably the grandest private residence within the city of Dublin, with its magnificent cantilevered elliptical staircase and the sumptuous saloon stretching the entire length of the building.

There is also a good group of 18th-century portraits and a fine collection of early Waterford glass, in addition to some exquisite 18th-century Dublin silver, particular to the Provost's House and maintained on a separate inventory from the regular college plate.

The University of Dublin, Trinity College, was established by charter of Queen Elizabeth I. This document gave to the fellows of Trinity College the right of electing the Provost. The first provost nominated in the charter of 1592 was Adam Loftus, who was also archbishop of Dublin and lord chancellor of Ireland. He lasted only two years in the post.

By the charter of Charles I, the right of electing the provost was reserved to the crown; it passed in 1921 to the Executive Council of the Irish Free State, and later to the "Government of Eire". Nowadays the provost is appointed by the government, and instead of holding the office for life (hence the entry against so many of the earlier provosts names in the College records: "Died in the College") normally holds office for 10 years.

In 1974 a new statutory procedure provided for "the proposed choice of the College to be conveyed to the Government", the nomination being made by a body amounting in this election to 525 votes consisting almost entirely of academic staff.

I took part in the last election for provost 10 years ago. It was rather like a papal consistory. We were all (about 400 members of academic staff, mostly attired in gowns) locked into the Exam Hall for the entire course of the election. There were, however, emergency provisions in the areas of food and lavatory services.

The atmosphere reminded me of school as there were sporadic outbreaks of naughtiness, giddiness and gossip, which were great fun, although an atmosphere of solemnity generally prevailed, and, of course, the matter of the election of the provost was always treated as a serious issue.

The provost, as head of the college, is "invested with higher authority than any other person in the control both of the members and of the business of the College". He or she convenes and presides at meetings of the board.

Provosts come and provosts go, but the college has shown a remarkable capacity to change, adapt and survive. This is illustrated by its entanglement in the Jacobite wars. In 1689 King James imposed on the college a Roman Catholic priest, a Dr Michael Moore, with the enthusiastic collaboration of the hierarchy.

The college itself was occupied as a barracks, the chapel used as a magazine for storing ammunition and a number of the buildings commandeered for imprisoning stray Protestants.

However, Dr Moore, aided by the king's chaplain, a Father Teigue McCarthy, managed to preserve the library and its manuscripts in the midst of all this mayhem, an achievement for which all subsequent scholars and bibliophiles have been grateful. In later years, Father McCarthy became rector of the University of Paris where he died in 1726 and is buried in the chapel of the Irish College there.

Some provosts have been remarkable personalities. William Bedell who was also bishop of Kilmore and Ardagh became provost on August 16th, 1727, and resigned two years later. A committed Protestant, he was also a man of humane culture.

He translated the Bible and the Catechism into Irish, the language of the people "whose souls must not be neglected until they become learned in the English language" and who could thus be enabled to utter "in their own tongue the wonderful works of God".

Provost Bedell was in many ways a saintly man, something that could not be attributed to his immediate predecessor, William Temple, who regarded the college's fixtures and fittings as fair game, walking off with pretty well everything that wasn't nailed down, including the silver communion set from the college chapel.

When Temple's life was drawing to a close Archbishop Usher wrote that some "most unfit persons are now putting in for that place of Provost and I cannot think of a more worthy man and more fit for the government of the College than Mr Bedell".

A fascinating figure was Provost John Hely Hutchinson, who was admitted as provost in July 1774, although for many years he had (despite being a graduate) no connection with the college and sent his own sons to Eton and Oxford. He was possessed of a wonderful mixture of corruption and common sense which would have fitted splendidly into Irish public life in the late 20th century.

He was the first provost to be married and have children and he secured royal dispensations for such of the fellows as were in a similar predicament and promised to support him loyally subsequently. A master of the art of skimming off money from building contracts, he also showed considerable adroitness in rigging elections both within the college and for the national parliament.

Then as now, the college and its graduates, like its sister colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, had the privilege of parliamentary representation. By bribery, corruption and coercion, he succeeded in getting one of his sons sent to the House of Commons to represent the college interests.

One of his favourite electoral methods was to send round his agents to fill the scholars up to the gills with drink on the principle that if they were drunk enough they would vote for him, a practice not unknown in some modern constituencies.

The college election of 1790 was so scandalous that there was a parliamentary commission which exposed various malpractices and even accused the provost of employing the black arts. Indeed so colourful was Hely Hutchinson's character that he became the subject of a well-researched and witty radio programme in the Georgian Graft series by the distinguished historian and Trinity graduate, Dr Mary Lyons, broadcast on RTE radio.

There was, however, more to Provost Hely Hutchinson than high jinks, for he had the foresight to establish the very first professorships in modern languages. Until then French, German and Italian were not regarded as fit subjects for university study.

He also established the Junior Common Room as a method of attracting undergraduates from the delights of a proliferation of Dublin brothels by making available a conversation room in which tea, coffee and newspapers were available, as they were in the more dissolute establishments.

He was less successful in attempting to set up professorships of fencing and horseriding, which exposed him to ridicule and earned him the nickname of the Prancing Provost.

In more recent times perhaps the most colourful provost was the Rev Sir John Pentland Mahaffy, Oscar Wilde's tutor, master of the epigram but a moral coward.

It was, I think (and I anticipate scholarly correction if wrong), Mahaffy who said of Provost Traill, whom he hoped to succeed, upon learning of his final illness "Nothing trivial, I hope".

I am confident that no such unworthy thought would cross the minds of a modern candidate for the office.

David Norris is a senator for the University of Dublin and a Joycean scholar