Fresh figs, so beloved of the ancient Egyptians and Romans alike, are the stars of this ambrosial summer bake that works almost as beautifully with fig jam

Yesterday, we left a garden with a fig tree as tall as a house to catch a train to Rome Termini station, where tiny, thrill-seeking figs grow on the tracks. The fearless fig tree is a descendant of the prehistoric wild caprifig, which spread from Caria (hence the species name carica) in ancient Anatolia, across the Mediterranean. Cultivation is thought to have started in Egypt and the Levant, probably between 4000 and 2700BC; particular evidence of this is the common fig (Ficus carica) on the stone walls within ancient Egyptian tombs called mastaba, painted so their occupants could enjoy the fruit in the afterlife.

Dozens of examples are described in a research paper by the professor of Egyptology Noha Hany Gerges Salama, including paintings within a fifth-dynasty mastaba of Iymery, in Giza. One painting in particular depicts two fig trees, both of which have a boy standing in their branches and picking fruit, while men under the trees collect fallen figs in baskets. Another exquisite painting shows two men seated opposite each other, one of whom is holding a plate holding three enormous figs. Salama notes what a common food source fresh and dried figs were in ancient Egypt, and used often to enhance flavour and sweeten, but also how figs, their leaves and the sap from the branches provided a natural rennet for cheese-making and yeast for wine-making.

The Russian soprano says she has condemned the war and has no affinity with this Kremlin. But hosting her still seems unwise

Puccini’s Tosca is high on the list of operas I don’t much care if I never see again. So the fact that the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, unquestionably one of our era’s exceptional opera singers, is due to sing Tosca in a new production at Covent Garden next month does not present me with a dilemma. I won’t be there anyway.

It might be more difficult, I admit, if Netrebko was singing Verdi, where she is so outstanding. But this column is not about my taste in opera. It is about something of wider moral importance. Netrebko’s London performances pose complex questions but require straightforward answers. First, is it right for a prestigious British institution, the Royal Opera House, to be hiring Netrebko while the Ukraine war continues? The answer could in theory be yes, were she to repeat her opposition to the war, but on the current evidence it is no.

The Girlfriend is a nail-biting drama that centres on a love triangle between a mother, her son and his girlfriend. Its director and co-stars take us behind the scenes

A too-pure young man, training to be a doctor, scion of the wealthiest imaginable family, meets a smoking hot young woman, but is she who she seems? His mother thinks not. The quickest way to describe The Girlfriend is to say that it’s sort of perfect. The perspectives shift between that of Cherry, the girlfriend (Olivia Cooke), and that of Laura, the mother (Robin Wright, who also directs). Whoever’s take you are watching, that’s who you believe. Baroque events, blood and guts, flagrant lies – it all unfurls in exquisite interiors and idealised London street scenes.

It is compulsive. I bit my nails to shreds. It’s not clear who’s the psychopath, but someone is – and the crisscrossing erotic tension gives it the inevitability of Greek tragedy. People this irresistible to one another never end up at peace.

Samoans will go to the polls for parliamentary elections on Friday after months of political turmoil

Samoa will go to the polls on Friday in a national election called early by the caretaker prime minister, Fiamē Naomi Mata’afa, after months of political turmoil.

Official campaigning ceased on Sunday with billboards blacked out, posters taken down and social media endorsements suspended under strict orders from the electoral commissioner.