Rachel Ames, née Stainer (London, 1 October 1915 – Petronell, Austria, 24 November 1999) was a British novelist and journalist who wrote under the pseudonym Sarah Gainham.
After an "impulsive and unsuccessful wartime liaison", in 1947 she moved to Vienna, Austria, to work with the Four Power Commission, and married the journalist Antony Terry.
In 1956, Cyril Ray helped secure her a job as Central and Eastern Europe Correspondent for The Spectator, making a plea that she needed the money.
[3] Here Gainham drew on her own knowledge of Cold War spies and intrigues: Terry, hired to the Sunday Times by Ian Fleming, may have been an MI6 agent, and Gainham herself apparently researched a document 'East-West Routes for Agents', commissioned by Fleming, on how to gain access to West Berlin from East Berlin.
Gainham's 1967 book Night Falls on the City, a tale of love and betrayal set in wartime Vienna, achieved significant commercial success: it topped the New York Times bestseller list for several months, and was widely translated.