Ainslie is a writer and historian specialising in the Second Word War, with particular interest in the extraordinary - sometimes vexed, and often moving experience of working with German prisoners (PoW) in Britain. She has a first-class honours degree from the Open University and has been Tutor in Social History at the Workers' Educational Association in the north of England. She has published 'Trust, Reconciliation and Friendship' in Humanitas and in Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte. For this biography, her research has included official sources. private letters and papers, oral history accounts and interviews with people in Britan, and Germany. She lives in Brighton and writes from oast house in the Sussex countryside.