John Edward Costello (1943-1995) was a British military historian, who wrote about World War I, World War II and the Cold War. He was born in Greenock near Glasgow and graduated from Cambridge University in law and Soviet economic history. At Cambridge he was secretary of the Union and chairman of the Conservative Association. He then worked as a director and scriptwriter for the BBC before writing on military history. He died unexpectedly at the age of 52 while on a flight from London to Miami, having gone to Britain for research. He was living in Miami and Manhattan.