Shoghi Effendi was twenty-four and a student at Balliol College, Oxford, when a telegram informed him of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's death, and the will subsequently appointed him Guardian of the Cause. He was by his own account devastated and withdrew for months before taking up the role. Over thirty-six years he did four things: he systematically built the administrative order, establishing elected Local and National Spiritual Assemblies worldwide; he translated the central texts into English, choosing a deliberately elevated and archaic register modelled on the Authorised Version, which permanently fixed the sound of Bahá'í scripture in its most widely used language; he wrote long interpretive letters that constitute a substantial body of doctrine in themselves; and he directed a series of expansion plans that took the faith into most countries on earth. He died of Asiatic influenza in London in 1957, aged sixty, without children and without having appointed a successor — because, the community concluded, no eligible descendant remained who had not broken the Covenant. The interregnum was managed by the Hands of the Cause until the Universal House of Justice was elected in 1963.