After serving with distinction during the Second World War – becoming, in 1944, the youngest corps commander in the British Army – he had a distinguished postwar career and was the Governor of Gibraltar from 1958 to 1962.

[20] Keightley was able to benefit from Hobart's tutelage for only a brief period and, having been promoted to the rank of major, he was appointed in December 1938 to be an instructor at the Staff College, Camberley.

[22] In late December 1941 he was promoted to acting major-general to become Commandant of the Royal Armoured Corps Training Establishment.

He was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath for his services in Tunisia and also was awarded the Legion of Merit by the United States government.

After consultation with Harold Macmillan Keightley proceeded to hand over these prisoners and their families regardless of their nationality, including people with French, German, Yugoslav or Nansen passports.

[30] According to Nikolai Tolstoy’s Stalin’s Vengeance (2021) Keightley… concealed the presence of White Russians from his superiors, who had issued repeated orders stipulating that only Soviet nationals should be handed over, and even then only if they did not resist.

The Australian government objected to the appointment of an officer with no experience fighting the Japanese and the war ended before the details of the corps were finalised.

In 1946, Keightley left Austria and reverted to his permanent rank of major-general (to which he had received promotion in February 1945),[33] to become Director of Military Training at the War Office.

[34] On 21 September 1949, he became Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) in Germany[35] relinquishing the role in April 1951.

[40][41] His tenure at Middle East Land Forces included the period of the Suez Crisis and Keightley was C-in-C of Operation Musketeer in 1956.

He also held the honorary post of Colonel Commandant, Royal Armoured Corps, Cavalry Wing until April 1968.