Encounter was a
literary magazine, founded in 1953 by poet
Stephen Spender and journalist
Irving Kristol. The magazine ceased publication in 1991. Published in the
United Kingdom, it was a largely Anglo-American intellectual and cultural journal, originally associated with the
anti-Stalinist left. The magazine received covert funding from the
Central Intelligence Agency, after the CIA and
MI6 discussed the founding of an "Anglo-American left-of-centre publication" intended to counter the idea of
cold war neutralism. The magazine was rarely critical of American foreign policy, but beyond this editors had considerable publishing freedom.