Pan by Michael Clune review – a stunning debut of teen psychosis

This wild ride of a novel is remarkable for the honesty of its treatment of both mental illness and adolescence

The narrator of American nonfiction author Michael Clune’s first novel is the 15-year-old Nicholas, who lives with his father in a housing development so cheap and deracinated it inspires existential terror. It’s a place exposed to “the raw death of the endless future, which at night in the midwest in winter is sometimes bare inches above the roofs”. Just as frightening is Nicholas’s sense that “anything can come in”. One day in January, what comes into Nicholas is the god Pan – a possessing, deranging, life-threatening spirit. Or that, anyhow, is how Nicholas comes to interpret his increasingly disabling anxiety.

Pan is remarkable for the honesty of its treatment of both mental illness and adolescence. It shows more successfully than any other book I’ve read how these can be experienced as black magic – indeed, it allows that they might be black magic. Nicholas successfully prophesies trivial events (the wind rising, someone saying the word “diabetes”) and is haunted by a dead mouse’s squeak. Another boy finds a means of divination in a schlock fantasy novel. Even the pop anthem More Than a Feeling is a path to the uncanny; it’s a song with “a door in the middle of it … like the door on a UFO”. Nicholas becomes convinced that he is perpetually at risk of leaving his body – specifically, that his “looking/thinking could pour or leap out” of his head – and his friends, also being 15 years old, are ready to believe it, too. They are easy prey for Ian, a college-age man who sets himself up as a small-time cult leader among these high-school kids. Ian particularly targets Nicholas, telling him that only they are capable of real thoughts; the others in the group are “Hollows” who have “Solid Mind”, a deterministic mentality with no animating self. “The sound of words from a Hollow mouth,” says Ian, “contains an abyss.” Soon the group is staging rituals incorporating sex, drugs and animal sacrifice.

Published: July 16, 2025, 6:00 am

Toni at Random by Dana A Williams review – Toni Morrison’s editing years

A fascinating account of the Nobel laureate’s pioneering work as an editor at Random House

While a great deal has been written about Toni Morrison’s fiction, her work as a senior editor at Random House is less well known. Dana A Williams, professor of African American Literature at Howard University, sets out to fill this gap, offering an impeccably researched account of Morrison’s stint at Random House between 1971 and 1983, against the backdrop of the Civil Rights and the Black Arts movements. Reflecting ideas generated by that convergence, Morrison’s novels – described by the Nobel committee, when they awarded her the prize in literature in 1993, as giving life to an essential aspect of American reality – were driven by an unwavering belief in the possibility of African American empowerment through self-regard. Williams’s interest lies in showing how Morrison’s editorial career was informed by the same invigoratingly insular ethos. Whether writing or editing, her work was aimed at producing “explorations of interior Black life with minimal interest in talking to or being consumed by an imagined white reader”.

Morrison saw early on how that kind of insularity could be wielded as both a weapon and a shield. Addressing the Second National Conference of Afro-American Writers at Howard in 1976, she urged the audience to recognise that “the survival of Black publishing, which […] is a sort of way of saying the survival of Black writing, will depend on the same things that the survival of Black anything depends on, which is the energies of Black people – sheer energy, inventiveness and innovation, tenacity, the ability to hang on, and a contempt for those huge, monolithic institutions and agencies which do obstruct us”. These words could well have been repurposed as a mission statement for her editorial career, which, as Williams points out, consisted of “[making] a revolution, one book at a time”. Change was coming in America. Morrison’s contribution would be to work towards change in the overwhelmingly white world of publishing: “I thought it was important for people to be in the streets,” she said during an interview for the documentary Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, released in 2019. “But that couldn’t last. You needed a record. It would be my job to publish the voices, the books, the ideas of African Americans. And that would last.”

Published: July 15, 2025, 6:00 am

The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley review – teenage mothers and melodrama

This ambitious tale of solidarity and sisterhood in Florida has moments of poetic clarity, but falls short of the author’s dazzling debut

Writers sometimes talk of giving birth to their books, but probably very few are also working as doulas. It’s an experience that clearly informs Leila Mottley’s new novel, The Girls Who Grew Big, in which the struggles of pregnancy and motherhood loom large. Mottley’s work as a doula comes in addition to writing a bestselling debut novel, Nightcrawling, and featuring on Oprah’s Book Club; she was also youth poet laureate of Oakland, California, in 2018. But not much seems beyond the reach of the youngest ever writer to be longlisted for the Booker prize, back in 2022. The pity is that her considerable energy hasn’t translated into a more satisfying second book.

The Girls Who Grew Big tells the story of a gang of teenage mothers and the impromptu community they form in the humid disarray and general dysfunction of Padua, a fictional small town in the Florida panhandle. Led by their de facto leader, Simone, the Girls are a scrappy, ostracised handful of outsiders, variously rejected by their families and harshly judged by locals. Down on their luck and often abandoned by the adults in their lives, they resourcefully become a collective, based in the back of Simone’s truck.

Published: July 15, 2025, 8:00 am

The cowboy as a symbol of America: Jim Krantz’s best photograph

‘When I look at this photograph I want to be that guy. He’s super alive and in the moment. Everything about it is energising, masculine, powerful’

I’m not a cowboy and I don’t ride horses, but I’ve been around them my whole life. My dad had a furniture store near the stockyards in south Omaha, and I would watch the cattle being moved between pens ready to go to auction. I sensed a freedom in the cowboys that I related to. I’ve always been an explorer, it’s my nature. I’m more comfortable and I feel most alive in situations I’m not familiar with. I am always drawn to this same type – I’ve photographed test pilots and astronauts – the strong, quiet, self-directed types who seem to be in control of their destiny.

This shot of Mark, a friend of mine, was taken in 2014. All my images are productions, I don’t just happen to be there. I build a narrative and visit locations – it’s more like making a movie, it’s very intentional. I scout locations that connect to what I want to represent. This was a rugged area of northern Colorado. The shoot was really about speed and energy, and I wanted open spaces that could allow the cowboys to do what they wanted. I wanted harder surfaces and dramatic skies – although you never really know what you’re going to get. I take references from historical paintings and drawings of the American west, and ideas I carry on pieces of paper, so I go with a visual feel of what I want to do. I wanted to separate the colours of the landscape: the colour of the hat, the horse, its saddle blanket, were all selected deliberately. The image is all about power and grace – the gesture of the animal is so forceful, and the cowboy is so in control.

Published: July 16, 2025, 2:00 pm

All aboard the Nike Northern line? Why corporate takeovers of London's tube are a terrible idea | Oliver Wainwright

Transport for London’s call for sponsorship of the Waterloo & City line throws out the network’s founding principles of public service and good design

Published: July 16, 2025, 11:00 am

Meet the unstoppable Octowoman! LensCulture’s greatest portraits – in pictures

From kids sat in dusty vintage cars to a moving exploration of the Rwandan genocide, these spectacular images triumphed at the 2025 LensCulture awards

Published: July 16, 2025, 6:00 am

Never mind the Norman bollocks: Reading’s replica Bayeux tapestry is a prudish triumph!

It may not be completely anatomically accurate, but the Victorian copy of the Bayeux tapestry is as much an emblem of its time as the 11th-century original

‘We’ve already got one,” sneers a snotty French knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. With that holy grail of British history, the Bayeux tapestry, about to be lent by France to the British Museum, we could say the same. In 1885, Elizabeth Wardle of Leek, Staffordshire, led a team of 35 women in an extraordinary campaign to embroider a meticulous, full-scale replica of the entire early medieval artwork. With Victorian energy and industry they managed it in just a year and by 1886 it was being shown around Britain and abroad.

Today that Victorian Bayeux tapestry is preserved in Reading Museum, and like the original, can be viewed online. Are there differences? Of course. The Bayeux tapestry is a time capsule of the 11th century and when you look at its stitching you get a raw sense of that remote past. The Leek Embroidery Society version is no mean feat but it is an artefact of its own, Victorian age. The colours are simplified and intensified, using worsted thread, as Wardle explains in its end credits, “dyed in permanent colours” by her husband Thomas Wardle, a leading Midlands silk dyeing industrialist.

Published: July 15, 2025, 2:55 pm

‘A rarefied world of privilege’: lives of the New England upper class – in pictures

Tina Barney’s decades-long exploration of the bourgeois set her family belonged to reveals the strange rituals and claustrophobic banality of rich people’s everyday lives

Published: July 15, 2025, 6:00 am

London arts centre to amplify global majority voices and ‘urgent questions’

Founded by Lina Lazaar, Ibraaz will host challenging conversations amid growing concerns over freedom of expression in the arts

A new London art institution aimed at promoting global majority voices wants to be a space for “difficult, urgent questions” alongside civil debate, according to its founder, who claims freedom of expression is under threat.

Ibraaz will open this coming October in Fitzrovia, central London, and Lina Lazaar wants the 10,000-square-foot Grade II-listed building to become a bastion for respectful debate without the “aggression” seen in a lot of political discourse.

Published: July 15, 2025, 4:00 am

Women born in East Germany have lived between two worlds. That’s why we’re shaking up art and politics | Carolin Würfel

The stories of curator Kathleen Reinhardt and provenance expert Lynn Rother show how exclusion can be turned to powerful insight

In February 1990, the German news magazine Der Spiegel ran the headline “Why are they still coming?”, adding: “In West Germany, hatred for immigrants from the GDR could soon reach boiling point.” That year, resentment towards so-called newcomers from the east erupted without restraint. East Germans were insulted in the streets, shelters were attacked and children from the former GDR were bullied at school. There was a widespread fear that the weekly influx of thousands of people would overwhelm the welfare system and crash the housing and job markets. The public consensus? It needed to stop.

That same year, Kathleen Reinhardt and her parents moved from Thuringia in the former GDR to Bavaria. She was in primary school, and her new classmates greeted her with lines such as: “You people come here and take our jobs. You don’t even know how to work properly.”

Published: July 15, 2025, 4:00 am

Architectural home designs for $1: NSW releases housing pattern book aimed at boosting construction

Premier says plans have affordability and fast approval in mind as expert welcomes potential to ‘democratise good design’

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What if you could buy architect-designed drawings for a new home for $1 – and have certainty your council would approve it within 10 to 20 days?

The New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, released the state’s housing pattern book on Wednesday, which contains eight blueprints for architect-designed townhouses, terraces and manor houses, chosen from internationally renowned firms including Sam Crawford Architects, Carter Williamson Architects, Saha and Anthony Gill Architects.

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Published: July 15, 2025, 3:00 pm

Post your questions for Craig David

As the UK garage and R&B star prepares to release his ninth album and celebrates 25 years in the business, he is here to answer your questions

It is, incredibly, 25 years since Craig David broke out with his debut album Born to Do It, a classic of British garage and R&B. The Southampton-born musician has since proven to be one of the former genre’s greatest ambassadors: he has said his recent single, Wake Up, is about “respecting my garage roots” and the importance of preserving genres and cultures “for generations to come”.

That mission feels typical of David, a tireless and earnest pop presence due to release his ninth album, Commitment, next month. You can see the esteem he commands from the collaborators on it, among them Toddla T, Wretch 32, Jojo and Tiwa Savage. “Making music still turns me into that giggly, excited little kid who wants to feel the magic of it all,” he has said.

Published: July 16, 2025, 8:15 am

Where Oasis, the Killers and Noddy Holder raised hell: Britpop’s debauched HQ, the Columbia hotel

Noel Gallagher named a song after it, Marc Almond practically moved in and the Killers had a bathtub reserved for puking in – but was it rock’n’roll, or just a bit tragic?

In the early 2000s, a member of the New York dance-punk band Radio 4 was walking upstairs when he realised he’d forgotten the key to his room at London’s Columbia hotel. Rather than walk back down the several flights he’d already climbed, he drunkenly decided to jump all the way down to the reception level. When he regained consciousness, a bemused Courtney Love was staring down at his prone body. As was an irate hotel manager, who swiftly barred the band from staying there for years, before the crumpled musician was scooped up to go and spend a few days in hospital.

It was not easy to get barred from the Columbia hotel, but Radio 4 were not the only ones who managed it. Once, at 6am, members of Oasis decided to throw all the furniture in the bar out of the window, piece by piece. When items landed on the hotel manager’s Mercedes, the band had to scarper before the police arrived. It played such a significant part in Oasis’s story that Noel Gallagher wrote a song in tribute to it, Columbia, based on his escapades there back when he was a roadie for Inspiral Carpets.

Published: July 15, 2025, 1:14 pm

‘The perfect accompaniment to life’: why is a 12th-century nun the hottest name in experimental music?

​A mystic who turned visions into beautiful chants, Hildegard von Bingen has inspired everyone from Grimes to David Lynch. Musicians including Julia Holter explain the hold she has on them

‘And behold! In the 43rd year of my earthly course, as I was gazing with great fear and trembling attention at a heavenly vision, I saw a great splendour in which resounded a voice from Heaven saying to me, ‘O fragile human, ashes of ashes, and filth of filth! Say and write what you see and hear.”

These are the words of 12th-century polymath Hildegard von Bingen (or Hildegard of Bingen), recalling the divine intervention that set her on the path to becoming one of history’s earliest and most influential composers.

Published: July 15, 2025, 10:00 am

Oi! la la: meet the new wave of French punks making noise

The controversial, rabble-rousing strain of punk known as Oi! is once again giving voice to a nation’s working-class and disaffected youth. Luminaries of this new ‘Cold Oi’ scene explain the music’s eternal, anthemic appeal

Wearing washed 501 jeans, buzzcuts, boots and braces, punks and skinheads are packed into a small and sweaty venue. They’re pogoing to power chords and shouting along to the terrace-style chants coming from the stage.

But this isn’t London’s 100 Club in 1978, it’s a gig by French band Syndrome 81 in the suburbs of Paris in 2025. They sound like a surprising but appealing mash-up of Cockney Rejects and the Cult. And they are part of a new wave of French Oi! punk bands who are blending scrappy, working-class angst with a firm nod to the country’s synth-soaked coldwave past.

Published: July 15, 2025, 6:00 am

David Kaff, Spinal Tap keyboardist and musician, dies aged 79

The British musician and actor, who played Viv Savage in Rob Reiner’s mockumentary, died in his sleep

David Kaff, the British actor and musician known for playing keyboardist Viv Savage in Rob Reiner’s 1984 mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, has died aged 79.

His bandmates in Mutual of Alameda’s Wild Kingdom confirmed the news on their Facebook page, writing that the musician had “passed away peacefully in his sleep” on Friday.

Published: July 15, 2025, 2:24 am

The best moisturising lip balms to hydrate and protect your lips

Whether your lips are dry, chapped, sunburnt or just in need of some glow, there’s a top-rated lip balm to suit every skincare need

• The best sunscreens for summer: Sali Hughes’s 57 favourite face and body SPFs

Your lips may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about skincare, but they’re just as important to look after. That’s partly because the skin on your lips is thinner, making them more susceptible to dryness, peeling and even burning.

It can be tempting to pick the bargain option at the checkout, but not all balms are created equal. Choosing the right one can be tricky – your summer lip balm should be different from your winter lip balm, for example.

Best lip balm overall:
Biossance Pro-Peptide Lip Perfector
_{£9 at Sephora}

Best budget lip balm:
Vaseline Lip Therapy Original
_{£2.49 at Superdrug}

Best lip balm for dry lips:
Aquaphor Lip Repair
_{£5.67 at iHerb}

Best SPF lip balm:
Blistex Ultra lip balm SPF50+
_{£2.20 at Notino}

Best natural lip balm:
UpCircle lip balm
_{£11.99 at UpCircle}

Published: July 16, 2025, 2:04 pm

Drowning in admin? 14 productivity hacks to regain control of your diary, inbox – and life

No one knows more about admin than administrators. They share their top tips, from ‘eating the frog’ to drawing up a ‘ta-da’ list

Some of us are utterly hopeless with admin, others so good they do it for a living. What are the best ways to get your working life under control? Administrators share their productivity tips and efficiency hacks.

Published: July 16, 2025, 10:10 am

Friendship review – male inadequacy barbecued in Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd’s comedy bromance

Robinson is magnificently cringeworthy as a man in thrall to his cool neighbour Rudd in Andrew DeYoung’s film, as divisive as a Vimto-Marmite cocktail

Here is a goofy-surreal comedy from first-time feature-maker Andrew DeYoung, starring sketch comic Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd; it is potentially as divisive as a Vimto-Marmite cocktail. This is a shaggy dog tale of ineffable silliness, operating ostensibly on the realist lines of indie US cinema but sauntering sideways from its initial premise, getting further and further from what had appeared to be a real issue: how difficult it is for grown men to make new friends.

In this case, a beta-male chump attempts to be mates with his supercool new neighbour and you might even suspect that the film’s progressive excursion into stoner unseriousness itself enacts men’s avoidant nature, their inability to find an emotionally intelligent connection with each other. The result is not unlike the darkly wacky entertainments of Jim Hosking or Todd Solondz; there’s also a tiny hint of Charlie Kaufman and the white-collar-workplace losers of Ricky Gervais and Steve Carell.

Published: July 16, 2025, 10:00 am

Sali Hughes on beauty: I’ve got a real problem with neck creams. Here’s why …

Collagen-boosting retinoids and antioxidants do hold their own south of the chin, but ensure you lather on sunscreen first and foremost

If you’ve ever kindly searched for a recommendation of a neck cream from me, then you’ll know there are virtually none on record. This is because, despite so many being marketed in my direction and so many requests for a column about the best of them, I am consistently grumpy about neck products on principle. I certainly don’t neglect my own neck in my routine, and encourage anyone engaged in their appearance to take good care of their entire skin, scalp to toe. And I can obviously understand why people seek out a specialist neck treatment when they notice changes in firmness and texture on the throat. But skin doesn’t become different when it passes the jawline, it responds in the same way to TLC as the face, so I can see few good reasons for spending extra money.

The things we know can help produce collagen lost on the face and neck as we age, naturally or prematurely, are retinoids and, to a lesser degree, antioxidants like vitamin C. So I use these on my face and neck (usually at both ends of the day).

Published: July 16, 2025, 9:00 am

A moment that changed me: I stopped drinking – and realised what friendship really meant

I always thought hitting the bottle made me the life and soul of the party, but sobriety helped me to be honest with myself – and make genuine connections with other people

The conversation began with an apology. I’d rehearsed it many times, trying not to sound too defensive or pitiful. I’d walked through every potential rejection that might come as a result of letting my friend Gillian into a side of my life I’d tried hard to keep hidden. But she had just told me that she wanted to come to visit me in New Haven, so I was cornered. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sober now.” I felt embarrassed. “I have stopped drinking,” I added, to clarify. “If you visit, I can’t drink with you.”

In the pause that followed, I imagined her politely trying to work her way out of coming to see me, now that our favourite thing to do together wasn’t an option.

Published: July 16, 2025, 5:55 am

I traded booze for THC drinks. But are there hidden risks?

Giving up alcohol changed my life, but I wanted to know whether cannabis cocktails were too good to be true

Mark Zuckerberg, a billionaire, has said he avoids substances like caffeine because he likes “rawdogging” reality. I, on the other hand, do not. I mean, have you seen reality lately?

For most of my adult life, alcohol has been my preferred way to take the edge off. But, like a lot of other people, I got older and realized regular drinking was not doing me any favours. Last year, I experimented with “intermittent sobriety”, taking months off here and there. It helped, but it was also easy to slip back into bad habits.

Published: July 15, 2025, 4:00 pm

Dad has never been afraid to bargain. The day I bought my car, I saw a master at work

My father wanted me to feel satisfied with my purchase. He also thinks I’m stupid with salespeople, liable to say and pay too much

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I was nine when Dad first gave me the advice that would be a golden thread, a parable of wisdom conveying all his hard-earned knowledge in a few words.

He had just finished a long week at the mixed business we owned in the city, and we were at Menai Marketplace in Sydney’s south for a very special purchase. I was desperate for a PlayStation 1. I pointed at the Big W price tag and asked: “Dad, is this expensive?”

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Published: July 15, 2025, 3:00 pm

‘I wish I’d enjoyed my fame a bit more’: Jim Sturgess on regrets, romance and the art of the mix tape

He broke Hollywood in his early 20s, and found it all extremely scary. Now starring in a beautiful TV romance, Sturgess talks love, Walkmans – and why he might have just found his forever screen partner

Like all good love stories, this one starts with a chance meeting and ends with a reunion. It was 2008, pre-Hardy and Hiddleston, post-Bale and Grant; Jim Sturgess was a rising star and the latest handsome young Brit to break Hollywood. Having landed the lead role in casino thriller 21, Sturgess needed a love interest: cue a slew of chemistry tests with a roll call of beautiful young women, a process Sturgess remembers now as “the most exposed blind date you could ever possibly put yourself through, with five producers watching you from afar”.

Kate Bosworth got the role, but one actor lingered in Sturgess’s mind: an effervescent Australian called Teresa Palmer. “When you do those chemistry tests, they put you through it, so we spent the whole day together,” Sturgess says. “I was really hoping she was going to get the part, because we got on really well. She’s Australian, I’m English, and we were both in Hollywood going, ‘Where the hell are we?’”

Published: July 15, 2025, 2:08 pm

‘I might annoy you, but my intentions are good’: Joe Wicks’ alien-filled new exercise class for kids

The lockdown PE favourite has joined forces with the Hey Duggee team to turn himself into an animation. And now he’s on a mission to get the government to make Activate compulsory viewing in schools

Joe Wicks is doing some burpees. He is being his usual Joe Wicks self, shouting matey encouragement as his lustrous hair bobs up and down in time. If you watched PE With Joe, his daily lockdown-era YouTube series, it will be familiar. However, there is one important distinction. Wicks is now exercising in a void, surrounded by fuzzy little aliens. Welcome to Activate, his new frontier in getting children moving.

“Obviously, PE With Joe had so much impact, and I’m so proud of that,” Wicks says over Zoom. “But I had this niggling feeling that I couldn’t do this for ever. I can’t visit every school because thousands and thousands apply for me to visit every year.”

Published: July 15, 2025, 9:36 am

How to turn fruit and veg scraps into a delicious cake – recipe | Waste not

Many naturally sweet vegetable odds and ends might seem destined for the compost, but they could also be repurposed and pressed into service as a fancy cake

To celebrate 10 years of writing for the Guardian and seven years of this column, I thought it would be fitting to bake a cake inspired by where Waste Not began: my food compost bin. I looked through the fridge and raw compost bin, and found some squash, carrots, apples, cucumber ends, a knob of ginger and a woody stick of lemongrass; I even considered a red cabbage leaf, but decided that brassicas are best kept out of the baking tin. The compost bin is more than a place for leftovers, it’s a source of inspiration, as well as a way to reflect on what we waste; it can even guide us towards cooking more resourcefully and creatively.

Published: July 16, 2025, 12:00 pm

From crunchy chaat and yoghurt to spicy peanut butter: Ravinder Bhogal’s recipes for alternative potato salads

Put aside the mayo and make these spicy riffs on the classic summer salad: chaat and yoghurt, spicy peanut butter, and baked chips with whipped tofu

We are a family of potato lovers, so a summer salad made of tender spuds bound together with something creamy, something acidic and a handful of herbs is a perennial favourite. While I would never throw a classic out of bed, every now andd then I like to swerve the mayonnaise and do something a little more exuberant. Today’s potato salads are a riot of texture and flavour, and pack a serious punch. They are satisfying enough on their own, but serve them at your next barbecue and you are bound to please the potato pleasure-seekers in your life.

Published: July 16, 2025, 5:00 am

Why homemade stir-fry sauces are always better than bought in ones | Kitchen aide

Don’t bother with bought-in bottles, which are often too sweet. It’s easy to make your own, say our cooks – just remember, it’s all about balance …

• Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Most stir-fry sauces are sweet, dense and cloying. Any lighter, fresher alternatives?
Louis, Falmouth
If Julie Lin, author of Sama Sama: Comfort Food from my Malaysian-Scottish Kitchen, were to hazard a guess, it would be that Louis is buying shop-bought sauces: “They’re always sweet and dense,” she says. “There’s a phrase we use in Malaysia, agak agak, which means to season until you know that it’s good for you.” And that’s only ever going to come from making it yourself, which for Lin often means her “master wok” sauce. To make a bottle, she combines 75g white sugar, three teaspoons of MSG, and 75ml rice-wine vinegar, and whisks until the sugar dissolves. Stir in 300ml light soy sauce and 100ml dark soy sauce, followed by 50ml sesame oil. Pour that into a sterilised jar or bottle, give it a shake and keep for a month at room temperature. That’s then ready to go, or customise it with, say, chilli or garlic, because one stir-fry sauce is not going to fit all. While the basic master wok number is a good shout for stir-frying noodles, rice or vegetables, however, “if you’re going for a lamb stir-fry, for example, you’ll probably want to add some cumin, garlic and maybe make it more vinegary.”

For Justin Tsang, author of Long Day? Cook This: Easy East Asian Recipes with a Twist, it’s all about balance: “The perfect stir-fry sauce has to be salty, sweet and umami, but it shouldn’t be one more than the other; it should work in harmony.” If your sauce is bordering on too sweet or dense, anything “a bit tart or fruity” will work wonders: “That could be some sort of acid, such as lime juice to finish, or vinegar, or a splash of sharp Worcestershire sauce,” says Tsang, who has also been known to add HP Sauce to the mix. Alternatively, get to know your onions: “Using the finest grater on a box grater, grate a white onion into an almost-pulp, then mix into your sauce, along with a splash of vinegar – that will cut through any sweetness and make it lighter.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Published: July 15, 2025, 12:00 pm

Georgina Hayden’s recipe for red curry chicken and courgette burgers

This might just be summer’s winning recipe – ridiculously easy and delicious flavours for barbecue season

I present to you my new favourite summer burger, which has been on our menu at home ever since its arrival in my kitchen. It’s one of those recipes where the ease is almost embarrassing. How can something so delicious be so straightforward? The burgers themselves are a simple food processor job; if you don’t have one, use chicken mince and make sure you really mix in the curry paste and courgette by hand. The accompaniments are also key: the lime-pickled shallots, the abundance of herbs and the creaminess of the mayo all work so well together. Turn up to a barbecue with a tray of these and I guarantee you’ll be dishing out the recipe in no time.

Published: July 15, 2025, 5:00 am

Sali Hughes on beauty: I’ve got a real problem with neck creams. Here’s why …

Collagen-boosting retinoids and antioxidants do hold their own south of the chin, but ensure you lather on sunscreen first and foremost

If you’ve ever kindly searched for a recommendation of a neck cream from me, then you’ll know there are virtually none on record. This is because, despite so many being marketed in my direction and so many requests for a column about the best of them, I am consistently grumpy about neck products on principle. I certainly don’t neglect my own neck in my routine, and encourage anyone engaged in their appearance to take good care of their entire skin, scalp to toe. And I can obviously understand why people seek out a specialist neck treatment when they notice changes in firmness and texture on the throat. But skin doesn’t become different when it passes the jawline, it responds in the same way to TLC as the face, so I can see few good reasons for spending extra money.

The things we know can help produce collagen lost on the face and neck as we age, naturally or prematurely, are retinoids and, to a lesser degree, antioxidants like vitamin C. So I use these on my face and neck (usually at both ends of the day).

Published: July 16, 2025, 9:00 am