Andy Coogan
Scottish author
Andy Coogan (1 April 1917 – 22 March 2017) was a Scottish author, World War II veteran and middle-distance runner.
Biography
Coogan was born in Glasgow, the oldest child of poor Irish immigrants.
His promising athletic career was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. As a young man, he was a mile runner and his goal was to compete in the Olympic Games for Great Britain, but the consequences of war and imprisonment left him physically unable to continue this pursuit.
Captured during the Fall of Singapore, Coogan was interned at the Changi camp (site of the modern day Changi Prison) before being transported to Taiwan, where he worked as a slave in a copper mine and was twice ordered to dig his own grave. He was later sent to Japan on a hell ship voyage that nearly killed him.
After the war, Coogan returned to Scotland and founded Tayside Amateur Athletic Club, competing in veteran athletics, coaching, and devoting himself to encouraging everyone in the community to participate in sport.
In August 2012, Mainstream Publishing published Coogan's autobiography Tomorrow You Die: The Astonishing Survival Story of a Second World War Prisoner of the Japanese - the story of his 'poverty-stricken boyhood in the slums of the Gorbals to the atomic wasteland of Nagasaki'.
Personal life
Coogan and his wife of 65 years, Myra, had three children: Andy, Christine and Jean. He was the great-uncle of six-time Olympic champion Chris Hoy. Coogan died on 22 March 2017, ten days before his 100th birthday.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Andy Coogan” is scottish author. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Andy, Coogan and Scottish, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “scottish author” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4760538. VIAF identifies the subject as 264568100. The Library of Congress control number is no2012129223. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1917, 2017 and 2012.
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This entry incorporates text from “Andy Coogan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.