In America Widmerpool becomes something of a figurehead among youth protest movements; there are suggestions that his earlier problems may have resulted from a CIA plot. He returns to England in the late 1960s and is installed as Chancellor of a new university. During the ceremony he is pelted with red paint but immediately identifies with the demonstrators and becomes a central figure in the counter-culture movement. He resigns the chancellorship after a year, to run a commune for dissident youth. By late 1969, he has been drawn into a more sinister cult, led by the young mystic Scorpio Murtlock, which gradually overwhelms his life and independence. He is last heard of late in 1971, when during a ritual dawn run through the woods he collapses and dies.