 As the last director of the WAAF, and the first director of the WRAF in February 1949, Peake steered the service through the difficult transition to its peacetime role.She was advanced to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1949.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"