It’s the 30th birthday of the young upstart who dared take on the New York Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books. To celebrate, management has thrown open the doors to readers, making its entire anniversary issue available at its website.

Numerous British papers are reporting on the occasion, but perhaps the best overview of the LRB, its history and significance, is this in-depth appreciation in the Financial Times by John Sutherland. As he notes, the LRB is regarded as the best of the best by many (Sutherland quotes Clive James calling it, “the house magazine of the intellectual elite,” nice although not necessarily a compliment, come to think of it).

Sutherland also details its interesting history — it started when the TLS shut down for a year, and it began life as a supplement folded into copies of the NYRB.