This is first indicated by his obsequious response to being hit in the face by a banana, thrown by the school's cricket captain.[19] It is further shown by his outrage over a prank played by his schoolfellow Charles Stringham on their housemaster, Le Bas.[20] He has a craving for acceptance, even at the price of humiliation, and has a natural talent for aligning himself with the dominant power.[21] Many of Widmerpool's traits are evident quite early in his career: his pomposity, his aversion to all forms of culture ("the embodiment of thick-skinned, self-important philistinism" according to one commentator), his bureaucratic obsessions and his snobbishness.[4][22] He is politically naïve and his contribution to the pre-war appeasement of Nazi Germany is to suggest that Hermann Göring be awarded the Order of the Garter and given a tour of Buckingham Palace.[23][24] Yet, as the novel sequence progresses, Widmerpool emerges as far less of a buffoon and becomes, against all expectations, powerful and power-obsessed.[8] In his analysis of Powell's fiction, Nicholas Birns identifies an incident in The Acceptance World (the third volume of the series) as the point at which the assessment of Widmerpool by his contemporaries begins to change.