Yevonde's most famous project was the the Goddesses series of 1935 in which she photographed society women as subjects from Roman and Greek mythology. Each portrait was carefully set up with costumes and props, and shows her at her most creative and witty (and partly influenced by the Surrealists). Her sitters included many of the most talked-about women of the day, such as Diana Mitford, Mrs Michael Balcon, the Duchess of Argyll, and Mrs Anthony Eden (above) as Clio, the muse of history.

The National Portrait Gallery has just reopened after three years of redevelopment. One of the first temporary exhibitions features the photography of the enormously influential Yevonde (1893-1975, seen here in a 1937 self-portrait). Madame Yevonde, as she was also known, was a pioneer of colour photography who made her name with highly styled, glamorous portraits of society women and celebrities. As befits a member of the women's suffrage  movement, she rejected the demure romanticism of Edwardian studio photography and developed her own experimental and unconventional style. 

Not everyone who enjoys eating jam wants to make it, but there is plenty of good, interesting jam on the market. Modern preservers such as England Preserves and Lillie O'Brien at London Borough of Jam combine fruits and often adventurous flavours in small batches. Brands such as Bonne Maman and Tiptree, which has a good small museum of jam and several tea rooms where jams can be sampled with scones, make all the classics such as the raspberry in Candide and Butter (2009) by Emily Patrick.

In Louisa May Alcott's Good Wives (1869), the newly married Meg tries to please husband John: "fired with a housewifely wish to see her storeroom stocked with homemade preserves, she undertook to put up her own currant jelly." John returns home to a "pungent smell of burned sugar" and a sobbing wife. "In the kitchen reigned confusion and despair. One edition of jelly was trickled from pot to pot, another lay upon the floor, and a third was burning gaily on the stove." Anyone who has had a jam disaster or whose "jelly won't jell" will commiserate - and laugh. The beautiful berry painting is Still Life with Redcurrants (1900) by Eloise Harriet Stannard.

The Women's Institute produced enormous amounts of jam and bottled fruit during the war. This photo, part of the Ministry of Information collection at the IWM, shows members at a 'jam-making centre' on the east coast of England. A great deal of ingenuity was required to adapt recipes during rationing. They Can't Ration These, 'the object of which is to show where to seek and how to use Nature's larder, which in a time of peace and plenty people overlook or ignore' has recipes for jellies made from foraged ingredients.

There is a wonderful summer scene in Anna Karenina (Part 6, Ch 2) in which several ladies sit on the terrace after dinner to chat, sew, and knit, while Kitty demonstrates her 'modern' method of making strawberry and raspberry jam without water, much to the horror Levin's former nurse, now the family's housekeeper. Tolstoy's knowledge is so detailed that a novice jam-maker could learn a great deal from reading it. The painting is Making Jam (1876, Tretyakov Museum) by Vladimire Makovsky.

As soft fruit appears in shops and markets, our thoughts turn to jam and preserves. One of the most memorable evocations of summertime 'preserving madness' with intense heat, pressure to peel 'rows of golden peaches' before they spoil, and smells of spice and vinegar, can be found in Heat Lightning. On a visit to her family, Amy recalls the 'shelves and shelves' of glass jars in the cellar when she was a child; they may have looked something like Monet's painting, Jar of Peaches (c1866, Galerie Neue Meister).