[1] Gough was educated at Cheam School[1] and then enrolled as an officer cadet in the Royal Naval College, Osborne, where he won an Honourable Mention in 1915.
Originally intending to go into farming and horse-breeding in India (his father had been a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Indian Army and he had been born there at Kasauli), Gough returned to Britain after two years to join a firm of insurance brokers affiliated with Lloyd's of London.
[1] On his return he was posted to GHQ in France but was immediately caught up in the evacuation of Dunkirk where he was mentioned in despatches (he managed to get back to Britain on 1 June 1940).
[citation needed] The Squadron worked in North Africa and Italy in 1943, for which Gough won the Military Cross in connection with the landing at Taranto.
[2][3] In April 1974, Gough said that in retrospect it was a mistake for the Conservative Party to have forced Sir Alec Douglas-Home out of the leadership in 1965.
He lived to see the release of the film A Bridge Too Far, which he described as "[playing] ducks and drakes with historical facts in order to dish up an extravaganza fit for the American massed cinema market".