Ellie Midwood

Ellie Midwood builds wartime novels through sustained study of modern Europe and the pressures war places on ordinary loyalties. Of Knights and Dogfights begins at an Austrian flying school in 1938, where four young men become friends through a shared love of flight. The story follows them into campaigns over Europe, North Africa, and the Eastern Front as youthful ideas about honor give way to doubt, loss, and captivity. Midwood centers Johann and Willi, fictional pilots inspired by real figures who did not serve together. Published in 2018 as a standalone novel, the book treats aviation as more than spectacle. There, duty, conscience, friendship, and survival collide. Midwood's linguistic background and historical research support a narrative interested in how individuals reassess causes they once accepted under intense unfamiliar moral pressure.