The Spectator the ladder to high office in the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom. Past editors include Boris Johnson (1999–2005) and other former cabinet members Iain Macleod, Ian Gilmour, and Nigel Lawson. In late 2008, "Spectator Australia" was launched; the current editor is Rowan Dean. This offers 12 pages of "Unique Australian Content" (including a separate editorial page) in addition to the full UK contents. Readership of "The Spectator Australia" was revealed through a court case as being 3,000. "The Spectator"s founding editor, the Dundonian reformer Robert Stephen Rintoul, launched the paper in July 1828 with a first issue for the
Encounter (magazine) Encounter (magazine) 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. Spender served as literary editor until 1967,