 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 <unk> , 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 . 
