Have you heard of Ruth Fry? To be precise, she was Anna Ruth Fry and we are ashamed to say we hadn't. But playwright-poet Tony Harrison has put her on stage in his new play Fram, which is being premiered at the National Theatre. It is a play of ideas, centring on the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen who was appointed to the League of Nations, and his attempts to arouse public concern for Russian famine relief in 1922.

Eye is particularly embarrassed as a portrait of this writer-activist hangs prominently over the desk in Friends House library. Picture librarian Joanna Clark reports that the actress who plays Ruth on stage, Clare Lawrence, came into the library to research her part.

Ruth was one of nine children of the jurist Edward Fry, a Quaker who negotiated at the Hague Tribunal of 1917. Of her siblings, Isabel was an educational reformer; Margery was a penal reformer and principal of Somerville College, Oxford; Joan was a leading Quaker; Agnes was an author; and Roger was an artist and critic. In the first world war Ruth was general secretary of the Friends War Victims Relief Committee.

She toured war zones and wrote of her experiences in A Quaker Adventure (1926). Ruth was the first chair of the Russian Famine Relief Fund, secretary of the National Council for the Prevention of War and in the 1930s was treasurer of the London branch of War Resisters' International.

So far Eye has heard indifferent reactions to the play from readers. Has anyone seen it and liked it?