My mother, Alice Beer – Quaker, potter and poet, who has died aged 98 – was still making new friends in her 90s. At 95, she was interviewed by a woman working on a PhD, who introduced Alice to her teenage daughters, telling them that although Alice looked like an old lady, she had the curiosity of a child.
She was born Alice Freyberger into an Orthodox Jewish family in Vienna. Her socialist beliefs made 1930s Vienna a dangerous place for her, so she came to Britain as a domestic servant. One of her early poems, Journey and Arrival, encapsulates her fascination with this new world and a lack of illusion about her status in society. My father, Franz Beer, joined her and they married in 1938 and settled in Leicester. They had three children.
Alice came into her own when she had more spare time to concentrate on pottery and poetry. She undertook an Arvon Foundation course, taught by UA Fanthorpe, and this encouraged her to publish her collection Facing Forward Looking Back (2000). Talking of Pots, People and Points of View followed in 2005, then Window On the Square in 2009. I remember her pride the first time a magazine paid her for a contribution.
The principles, humanity and strong sense of community of the Quakers appealed to Alice. The day she became an elder was a homecoming for her. Her other great love was chamber music, especially Lindsay String Quartet concerts.
Alice visited the women's peace camp at RAF Greenham Common in Berkshire several times and retained her pacifist and socialist beliefs to the end. In 2007 she attended the anti-Trident demonstration at the Faslane naval base on the Clyde.
Franz died in 1979. Alice is survived by two daughters, Christine and me, a son, Martin, and four grandchildren, Stephen, Martin, Julia and Scott.