Keith attended Oakham School until the age of eighteen. The photograph to the right is of Keith as a teenager on his horse Sandy.

Whilst at Oakham he took up the bagpipes. It seems this was largely to annoy his mother and his teachers, who rashly told him that provided he took up a musical instrument (which he did not wish to do) he could choose whichever one he wanted.

With a passion for language, particularly phonetics, Keith gained a scholarship exhibition to Cambridge to study Classics in 1941.