"The liveliest, the most serious and also the most radical literary magazine we have" is how Alan Bennett describes the London Review of Books, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this week. For Tom Paulin it's "the most extraordinary journal of its time". Among the many reasons it seems so essential to Britain's intellectual life, two stand out. First is the standard it keeps up. Over its lifetime, all the best British writers have contributed – Philip Larkin, Seamus Heaney, Angela Carter, Martin Amis, Hilary Mantel, and so on and on. And every one of those long, often taxing, sometimes playful essays on every conceivable subject has clearly had to make a very high grade. The editorial care taken is a cause for wonder and cheer. Second, the LRB is small (if 50,000 subscribers is small), independently owned, and has the freedom to be itself. It's often quirky and occasionally controversial. It doesn't mind if its reviews are late so long as they're the best; it operates far enough outside the usual literary circles to make it resistant to hype. Even if there isn't time to read John Lanchester's funny, revelatory pieces on the banking crisis, or Frank Kermode on JM Coetzee, or even a postman eloquent on the need to strike, the personal ads are diverting enough ("Medication-free after all these years!"). When the LRB falls on to the doormat each fortnight, there's always an anticipation of pleasure, and a sense of reassurance that something of such distinction is still around, and prospering.