'Bip' The Economist has been my favorite magazine for a long time now and for good reason. There, in my knowledge, is no other magazine which offers such a brilliant mix of incisive analysis, all round coverage and strong opinions on the key issues at hand. All this is delivered in beautiful correct English, the Queen's English.

One of the less followed sections in the Economist may be the Obituary section. But it is in this section that I have discovered about people (albeit a bit late) from a wide range of professions arousing a wide range of emotions. It is probably the only section in the Economist which focuses solely on history, by necessity rather than design, but it is here that we often discover written gems like the one given below. This bit of writing describes the life of Bip, the world's quietest clown who died on September 22nd ('older than he seemed' as per the Economist)

"That he should wish to die was also not surprising. Often he was kept, crouching or standing, in a small cage on the stage. One by one, he ran his hands along the bars until, with all his strength, he pushed two apart and jumped nimbly out; but then, right ahead of him, behind him, all round him, he found his palms flattening against a wall of glass. Each cage was contained in another. His hands often became birds, flickering and fluttering out of his sleeves, and he made them fly swiftly from their prisons, laughing as they flew. But the bars soon closed again around him"

Outstanding, isn't it?  ¶ 1:19 PM