Christopher Pugsley was born in 1947 in New Zealand. He is a military historian who became interested in writing as an army officer when he wrote a book and contributed to a documentary about New Zealand's involvement in the Gallipoli campaign. In 1987 he left his career as an infantry lieutenant-colonel to devote all his time as an historian. In 1994, he became Writing Fellow at the Victoria University of Wellington. He then taught at University of New England, Australia from 1996 to 1999. He is currently Senior Lecturer in War Studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and Adjunct Senior Fellow at New Zealand's University of Canterbury. During the 1990s he wrote a series of detailed articles called "Walking the Waikato Wars", in the New Zealand Defence Quarterly, in which he visited each Waikato Battle site and reviewed each battle through the eyes of a modern professional military officer using photographs and maps to illustrate events. In 2015 his title A Bloody Road Home: World War Two and New Zealand's Heroic Second Division made The New Zealand Best Seller List. It also made the shortlist for the Ernest Scott Prize for history.
