Gordon Corrigan (1942–2026) was a British Army officer, military historian, author and broadcaster. Educated at the Royal School, Armagh, and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, he was commissioned in 1962 and spent much of his military career with the Brigade of Gurkhas, serving in the Far East as well as Cyprus, Berlin, Belize and Northern Ireland. He eventually commanded the Gurkha Centre before retiring from the Army in 1998 with the rank of major. Corrigan was awarded the MBE in 1995 and later became a professional historian, lecturer and battlefield guide. He was a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and was associated with academic and military institutions including the universities of Kent and Birmingham and the Joint Services Command and Staff College. Corrigan died on 26 February 2026.
His books concentrate on military history from the medieval period to the Second World War. Sepoys in the Trenches examines the Indian Corps on the Western Front in 1914–15, while Mud, Blood and Poppycock challenges popular assumptions about British generals, tactics and casualties during the First World War. Loos 1915 provides a detailed account of that costly battle, and Blood, Sweat and Arrogance reassesses aspects of Britain’s performance during the Second World War. Corrigan also wrote Wellington: A Military Life, The Second World War: A Military History, A Great and Glorious Adventure, on the Hundred Years War and the emergence of Renaissance England, and Waterloo: A New History of the Battle and Its Armies. Across these works he combined the perspective of a professional soldier with a willingness to challenge established interpretations of campaigns and commanders.
