Peake spent much of her youth at Haslington Hall, an Elizabethan house near Crewe, bought by her father after the First World War.

Called up on 1 September 1939, she became a company assistant (the equivalent of a Pilot Officer), just a month before her husband was killed when his plane crashed in Surrey during a night-flying exercise.

She was credited with helping to retain the airfield's ability to operate and this contributed to her being appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire.

Following her retirement in 1950, Peake joined the board of the Truman, Hanbury and Buxton brewery, a job she described in her memoirs, Pure Chance (1993), as "sheer bliss": there was no "buck passing", no red tape, and she could get things done.

She and her husband, Harald, bought a farm in Oxfordshire, where they bred pedigree Ayrshires and Jerseys, and a house in the south of France.

They had one child, Conservative party politician and member of Parliament for Manchester Moss Side James Watts, who was Peake's cousin.