to the Suffolk Yeomanry, eventually reaching the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Member of Parliament He was a member of West Suffolk County Council from 1933 to 1945, and was selected in 1938 as the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for the Isle of Ely constituency, to stand against Liberal MP James de Rothschild. The parties had expected a general election in late 1939, but it was postponed for the duration of the war. In January 1944 the Conservative MP for Bury St Edmunds, Lieutenant-Colonel Frank Heilgers, was killed in the Ilford train crash. The three political parties which shared office in the wartime Coalition Government 1940–1945 had agreed not to contest by-elections when vacancies arose in seats held by the other coalition parties, and when Keatinge was selected later in January as the Conservative and National Government candidate for the resulting by-election, he could have expected to be returned unopposed, as had happened in most other wartime by-elections. Bury St Edmunds was a safe seat for the Conservatives, having returned Conservatives at every election since 1885, and Heilgers had been returned unopposed in 1931 and 1935. However, Liberal Party activist Margery Corbett Ashby decided to contest the seat. She resigned her position in the Liberal Party, and stood as an Independent Liberal candidate with the support of the socialist Common Wealth Party. The contest gained national attention, and became seen as a test of the credibility of the government. The poll was held on 29 February, when Keatinge held the seat after a hard-fought campaign unfamiliar in a safe seat, but with a majority of only 12%. Later life He did not stand again at the 1945 general election. His father, Gerald Keatinge, had transferred to him the ownership of the family's estate of Teffont Evias, near Salisbury in Wiltshire. The estate was in a ruinous condition after the war; large areas had been covered with concrete by the US VIII Bomber Command, all the hedges had overgrown enormously, and the Manor had been requisitioned for printing maps and the soldiers had stripped and sold the lead from the roof. Keatinge did not think it possible to effectively combine his role there with service in Parliament. Katherine was also very unhappy in the role then expected of a Conservative MP's wife. On the death of his father-in-law in 1947, almost all of Reginald's assets were liquidated to pay death duties; the Suffolk