My mother, Juliet Ace, who has died aged 87, was one of the original writers for the TV soap EastEnders and a prolific playwright specialising in radio drama.
She wrote two films for S4C (Llygad y Ffynnon, 1994, and Cameleon, 1997), more than 40 radio plays and many episodes of The Archers. She was nominated for a Welsh Bafta and twice for Sony awards. Her final radio play for BBC Radio 4 was Moving the Goalposts, broadcast in 2020, which told the story of her survival of stage four spinal cancer.
She somewhat miraculously defied the prognosis of imminent death and lived for another 12 years, but was in no way heroic about it. One of her proudest moments came when a doctor told her that he had prescribed her play to one of his patients.
Born and raised in Llanelli, south Wales, Juliet was the daughter of Glenys (nee Evans) and Charles Ace, a businessman. It was a chaotic wartime childhood, speaking Welsh with her mother’s relatives in Llangennech and English at home: her father wanted her to sound like a Home Service announcer.
After leaving Llanelli girls’ grammar school, she trained as a teacher in Coventry and as an actor at Rose Bruford College in London. She was in weekly rep at the Swansea Grand theatre before leaving to care for her dying mother, then taught for a while at Edward Seguin school in Finsbury Park, north London.
After marrying Richard Alexander in 1966, she moved to Dartmouth, Devon, where her husband worked as a lecturer at the Naval College. She had two children, Daniel and me, worked in local primary schools and was involved in the Dartmouth Players.
In her late 30s she realised she was a writer after attending a residential course run by the Arvon Foundation, and the plays poured out of her. She claimed to have had enough rejection letters to paper her toilet walls, but her first broadcast play, Speak No Evil, went out on BBC Radio 4 in 1980.
Steadily she built a reputation for her keen characterisations, sharp and truthful dialogue and exploration of social themes as diverse as hearing loss, Kurdish refugees in London and war correspondents in Beirut. Many of her plays were autobiographical and described life growing up in Wales, her communist uncles, and more recently her two experiences of cancer.
After her marriage ended, she moved back to London in the 1980s. Her talent had been spotted by Julia Smith and Tony Holland, and in 1985 she was part of the first group of writers for the new BBC soap EastEnders. She loved the work, the new friendships, and the income that enabled her to buy a dilapidated house in Camden.
In recent years she researched and wrote Rigby Shlept Here (2015), a biography of the actor Terence Rigby: a tribute to one of her dearest friends. She lived independently until the end of her life, fiercely intelligent and with a strong propensity for giggles.
She is survived by Daniel and me, and by three grandchildren, George, Masha and Stanley.