“Like Some Large Grub”

As the great Jack Shafer has noted time and again, British-style obituaries are a zillion times more entertaining than ours. And that’s primarily because the Brits aren’t afraid of speaking ill of the dead when such treatment is warranted. Such is the case with The Economist’s recent farewell to Prabhakaran, the Tamil Tigers’ slain leader. The magazine’s acidic take on his life is nothing short of devastating:

No philosophy or ideology guided him, as far as anyone could tell. He did not like abs