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''Encounter'' was a literary magazine founded in 1953 by poet
Stephen Spender Sir Stephen Harold Spender (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by the ...
and journalist Irving Kristol. The magazine ceased publication in 1991. Published in the United Kingdom, it was an Anglo-American intellectual and cultural journal, originally associated with the
anti-Stalinist left The anti-Stalinist left is an umbrella term for various kinds of left-wing political movements that opposed Joseph Stalin, Stalinism and the actual system of governance Stalin implemented as leader of the Soviet Union between 1927 and 1953. Th ...
. The magazine received covert funding from the
Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
after the CIA and
MI6 The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
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 and generally shaped its content to support the geopolitical interests of the
United States government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a feder ...
. Spender served as literary editor until 1967, when he resigned.. The revelation of the covert CIA funding of the magazine occurred that year. He had heard rumours but had not been able to confirm them. Thomas W. Braden, who headed the CIA's
International Organizations Division The Directorate of Operations (DO), less formally called the Clandestine Service,Central Intelligence AgencyCareers & Internships Retrieved: July 9, 2015. is a component of the US Central Intelligence Agency. It was known as the ''Directorate o ...
's operations between 1951 and 1954, said that the money for the magazine "came from the CIA, and few outside the CIA knew about it. We had placed one agent in a Europe-based organization of intellectuals called the
Congress for Cultural Freedom The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was an anti-communist advocacy group founded in 1950. At its height, the CCF was active in thirty-five countries. In 1966 it was revealed that the CIA was instrumental in the establishment and funding of the ...
." Frank Kermode replaced Spender, but he too resigned when it became clear the CIA was involved. Roy Jenkins observed that earlier contributors were aware of U.S. funding but believed it came from
philanthropist Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives, for the public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private good, focusing on material ...
s, including a Cincinnati gin distiller. ''Encounter'' experienced its most successful years in terms of readership and influence under Melvin J. Lasky, who succeeded Kristol in 1958 and would serve as the main editor until the magazine ceased publication in 1991. Other editors in this period included
D. J. Enright Dennis Joseph Enright OBE FRSL (11 March 1920 – 31 December 2002) was a British academic, poet, novelist and critic. He authored ''Academic Year'' (1955), ''Memoirs of a Mendicant Professor'' (1969) and a wide range of essays, reviews, anthol ...
.


Founding and first editors

The launch in October 1953 of ''Encounter'', a monthly Anglo-American journal of politics and culture, was sponsored by the Paris-based
Congress for Cultural Freedom The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was an anti-communist advocacy group founded in 1950. At its height, the CCF was active in thirty-five countries. In 1966 it was revealed that the CIA was instrumental in the establishment and funding of the ...
(CCF). The CCF was an organization of largely center-left artists and intellectuals founded in 1950. In line with its title, it was dedicated to countering on behalf of the non-communist West the overtures and influence in the culture of the Soviet Union, which remained under the rule of Joseph Stalin until 1953, and the
Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of '' The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...
for several further decades. The covert partial funding of ''Encounter'' by the
Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
(and Britain's
MI6 The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
), via such American organizations as the Farfield Foundation, and thence to the CCF, was revealed in 1967 in the pages of '' Ramparts'', '' The New York Times'', and the ''
Saturday Evening Post ''The Saturday Evening Post'' is an American magazine, currently published six times a year. It was issued weekly under this title from 1897 until 1963, then every two weeks until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely c ...
''. Its bibliography shows shifting patterns of high-journalistic political allegiance, especially in the cultural sphere. Shifts on both sides of the Atlantic triggered by the rise of the " neoconservative" tendency in opposition to the prevailing left-liberalism in elite opinion are evident. The choices for the first two ''Encounter'' co-editors, the American political essayist Irving Kristol (1920–2009) and the English poet
Stephen Spender Sir Stephen Harold Spender (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by the ...
(1909–95) were telling, and in retrospect, can be seen to have set in template much of the course of the magazine's evolution even over its final twenty-three years succeeding Spender's resignation in 1967, after the revelations of covert CIA-funding.


Irving Kristol and the New York intellectuals

Irving Kristol edited the political articles in ''Encounter'' from 1953 until 1958, and though still a self-described liberal at the time, he was already laying the foundations of his eventual stance, from the late 1970s until his death in 2009, as the "godfather of neoconservatism." Influenced by his experiences in the
City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...
cafeterias of the late 1930s, where Marxists, Trotskyists, and Stalinists argued freely, Kristol had already, as early as 1952, in his writings in ''
Commentary Commentary or commentaries may refer to: Publications * ''Commentary'' (magazine), a U.S. public affairs journal, founded in 1945 and formerly published by the American Jewish Committee * Caesar's Commentaries (disambiguation), a number of works ...
'' during the McCarthy years, set the tone for the neo-populist critique of liberal "new class" elites he would later seed during his almost forty-year stint (1965–2002) as founding co-editor of '' The Public Interest'', the public-policy quarterly.


Stephen Spender and the English literary legacy

Stephen Spender Sir Stephen Harold Spender (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by the ...
cut a larger figure in strictly cultural circles, though with strong political engagements of his own – he was, at 44, one of England's leading men of letters of his generation, having been a prime constituent of the 1930s " MacSpaunday" generation of young English poets whose other members included
Louis MacNeice Frederick Louis MacNeice (12 September 1907 – 3 September 1963) was an Irish poet and playwright, and a member of the Auden Group, which also included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. MacNeice's body of work was widely a ...
,
W.H. Auden Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in t ...
, and C. Day Lewis. During his brief Communist phase in the 1930s, he had served in the Spanish Civil War with the anti-
Franco Franco may refer to: Name * Franco (name) * Francisco Franco (1892–1975), Spanish general and dictator of Spain from 1939 to 1975 * Franco Luambo (1938–1989), Congolese musician, the "Grand Maître" Prefix * Franco, a prefix used when re ...
International Brigades and later contributed to the essay collection '' The God That Failed'' (1949) edited by Richard Crossman. The other contributors who had become disillusioned with Communism included
Louis Fischer Louis Fischer (29 February 1896 – 15 January 1970) was an American journalist. Among his works were a contribution to the ex-communist treatise '' The God that Failed'' (1949), '' The Life of Mahatma Gandhi'' (1950), basis for the Academy A ...
,
André Gide André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1947). Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism ...
,
Arthur Koestler Arthur Koestler, (, ; ; hu, Kösztler Artúr; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was a Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler join ...
,
Ignazio Silone Secondino Tranquilli (1 May 1900 – 22 August 1978), known by the pseudonym Ignazio Silone (, ), was an Italian political leader, novelist, and short-story writer, world-famous during World War II for his powerful anti-fascist novels. He was no ...
, and
Richard Wright Richard Wright may refer to: Arts * Richard Wright (author) (1908–1960), African-American novelist * Richard B. Wright (1937–2017), Canadian novelist * Richard Wright (painter) (1735–1775), marine painter * Richard Wright (artist) (born 19 ...
; Koestler and Silone would in turn become from its outset regular contributors to ''Encounter''. Spender's apprenticeship in the editor's chair had come over a decade before when he served as deputy to the English aesthete
Cyril Connolly Cyril Vernon Connolly CBE (10 September 1903 – 26 November 1974) was an English literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine ''Horizon'' (1940–49) and wrote ''Enemies of Promise'' (1938), which combine ...
in editing, for its first two years, the influential literary monthly '' Horizon'' (1940–49), many of whose writers would show up in ''Encounter'' in due course throughout the 1950s and after. Spender's range of cultural contacts, in and out of the academic world, combined with the high-stakes sense of Cold War cultural mission driving the Paris-based CCF, enabled ''Encounter'' to publish, especially during its first fourteen years prior to the revelation of the early CIA funding and the defections so provoked, an international range of poets, short-story writers, novelists, critics, historians, philosophers and journalists, from both sides of the
Iron Curtain The Iron Curtain was the political boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union (USSR) to block itself and its s ...
. The long tail of the
Bloomsbury Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural, intellectual, and educational institutions. Bloomsbury is home of the British Museum, the largest mu ...
, World War I, and
Bright Young Things __NOTOC__ The Bright Young Things, or Bright Young People, was a nickname given by the tabloid press to a group of Bohemian young aristocrats and socialites in 1920s London. They threw flamboyant fancy dress parties, went on elaborate treasure h ...
generations of the early 20th century was a marked feature of the early years of Spender's tenure as the editor of the ''Encounter''s literary pages, with contributors such as Robert Graves,
Aldous Huxley Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the prominent Huxley ...
, Nancy Mitford,
Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ar ...
,
Edith Sitwell Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell (7 September 1887 – 9 December 1964) was a British poet and critic and the eldest of the three literary Sitwells. She reacted badly to her eccentric, unloving parents and lived much of her life with her governess ...
,
John Strachey (politician) Evelyn John St Loe Strachey (21 October 1901 – 15 July 1963) was a British Labour politician and writer. A journalist by profession, Strachey was elected to Parliament in 1929. He was initially a disciple of Oswald Mosley, and, feeling tha ...
, Evelyn Waugh, and Leonard and
Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...
– Virginia in posthumous diary form, her surviving husband Leonard as a political essayist and reviewer.


Oxbridge and London academics

''Encounter'' provided a prime forum for academics from the colleges of Oxford,
Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge becam ...
, and London UniversitiesIsaiah Berlin,
Hugh Trevor-Roper Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton (15 January 1914 – 26 January 2003) was an English historian. He was Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford. Trevor-Roper was a polemicist and essayist on a range of ...
, and A. J. P. Taylor among them—who discussed European history and the intellectuals helping to shape it. Trevor-Roper used the magazine as an outlet for his attacks, one on Arnold Toynbee's bestselling ten-volume ''Study of History'', and on '' The Origins of the Second World War'' by A. J. P. Taylor. Early outings by ''Encounter'' belletrists came when Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh playfully debated over successive issues the fine points of upper-class vs. lower-class English usage ("U and non-U"), as did
C. P. Snow Charles Percy Snow, Baron Snow, (15 October 1905 – 1 July 1980) was an English novelist and physical chemist who also served in several important positions in the British Civil Service and briefly in the UK government.''The Columbia Encyclop ...
and others, if less playfully, Snow's depiction within of a yawning chasm of mind between the "
Two Cultures "The Two Cultures" is the first part of an influential 1959 Rede Lecture by British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow which were published in book form as ''The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution'' the same year. Its thesis was that sci ...
" of the hard sciences and the humanities. Among the magazine's early luminaries in aesthetics and the history of art were Stuart Hampshire. and Richard Wollheim..


Political contours

On the political side of ''Encounter'', Kristol brought on board many members of the group usually known as The New York Intellectuals, both journalist, literary and polemical or social-scientific, among whom he had passed the years of his apprenticeship: the sociologists Daniel Bell and
Nathan Glazer Nathan Glazer (February 25, 1923 – January 19, 2019) was an American sociologist who taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and for several decades at Harvard University. He was a co-editor of the now-defunct policy journal ''The Pu ...
, who, respectively, would later serve as his successive co-editors (and, like Spender, political foils, especially in Bell's more pronounced case) at '' The Public Interest'', Sidney Hook, and, not least, the ideological hummingbird and scourge of "Midcult" Dwight Macdonald, who spent a year (1955–56) in London as associate editor, a tenure with which he would later attempt to make a retrospective reckoning in his "Politics" column in '' Esquire'' for June 1967 in what he would describe several months later as his "Confessions of an Unwitty CIA Agent". Mainline Americans for Democratic Action-style left-liberal Democrats such as
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr. (; born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger; October 15, 1917 – February 28, 2007) was an American historian, social critic, and public intellectual. The son of the influential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. and a s ...
and John Kenneth Galbraith rounded out the American contours in politics, while the early English contributions in politics came largely from the social-democratic, anti-Communist, anti-unilateral nuclear disarmament wing of the Labour fold, as represented by C.A.R. Crosland (
Anthony Crosland Charles Anthony Raven Crosland (29 August 191819 February 1977) was a British Labour Party politician and author. A social democrat on the right wing of the Labour Party, he was a prominent socialist intellectual. His influential book ''The ...
) (a close friend of Daniel Bell), R.H.S. Crossman ( Richard Crossman), and
David Marquand David Ian Marquand (born 20 September 1934) is a British academic and former Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP). Background and political career Marquand was born in Cardiff; his father was Hilary Marquand, also an academic and former La ...
, with occasional contributions from Conservative journalists such as
Peregrine Worsthorne Sir Peregrine Gerard Worsthorne ('' né'' Koch de Gooreynd; 22 December 1923 – 4 October 2020) was a British journalist, writer, and broadcaster. He spent the largest part of his career at the ''Telegraph'' newspaper titles, eventually becom ...
and the young
Henry Fairlie Henry Jones Fairlie (13 January 1924, in London, England – 25 February 1990, in Washington, D.C.) was a British political journalist and social critic, known for popularizing the term "the Establishment", an analysis of how "all the right peop ...
broadening the coverage. ''Encounter'' provoked controversy, with some British commentators arguing the journal took an excessively deferential stand towards United States foreign policy. Saunders, Frances Stonor. '' Who Paid the Piper?: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War''. Granta Books, 1999, (pp. 187-88). Cambridge literary critic
Graham Hough Graham Goulden (or Goulder) Hough (14 February 1908 – 5 September 1990) was an English literary critic, poet, and Professor of English at Cambridge University from 1966 to 1975. Life Graham Hough was born in Great Crosby, Lancashire, the son of ...
described the magazine as "that strange Anglo-American nursling" which had "a very odd concept of culture indeed". '' The Sunday Times'' referred to ''Encounter'' as "the police-review of American-occupied countries". Discussing the ''Encounter'' of the 1950s,
Stefan Collini Stefan Collini (born 6 September 1947)COLLINI, Prof. Stefan Anthony
''Who ...
in 2006 wrote that although ''Encounter'' was not "narrowly sectarian in either political or aesthetic terms, its pages gave off a distinct whiff of Cold War polemicizing".


Melvin Lasky and the 1960s

The transition to Kristol's replacement on the political side of ''Encounter'' in 1958 by Melvin J. Lasky (1920–2004) was seamless, and a key factor both in the broadening of the magazine's international scope to include a deeper extension of its European coverage, from the Soviet bloc not least, as well as its coverage of the newly decolonized nations of Africa and Asia. After combat with the seventh army and postwar service in Berlin under military governor Lucius Clay, Lasky founded the German-language monthly ''Der Monat'' (''The Month''), and, amid an adult life spent largely ever since in Germany, was enlisted in 1955 back in New York to edit the first two numbers of ''The Anchor Review'' (1955–57), an annual published by the new Anchor Books imprint of Doubleday, fruit of the 1950s quality-
paperback A paperback (softcover, softback) book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with glue rather than stitches or staples. In contrast, hardcover (hardback) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, le ...
revolution spearheaded by Jason Epstein, and whose international roster of high-humanist contributors – Auden, Connolly, Koestler, Silone – made it resemble a concurrent mini-''Encounter''.


Ties to Eastern Bloc dissidents

During his 32 years at ''Encounter'', Lasky, with his balding head and
Van Dyke beard A Van Dyke (sometimes spelled Vandyke, or Van Dyck) is a style of facial hair named after the 17th-century Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641). The artist's name is today normally spelt as “van Dyck", though there are many variants ...
centrally cast as an inverted Lenin, proved instrumental in the long and dedicated cultivation of contacts from among the persecuted writers of Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Romania, the Soviet Union, and then- Yugoslavia, and devoted extensive front-cover coverage throughout the 1960s and 1970s to the judicial travails in Russia of
Andrei Sinyavsky Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky (russian: Андре́й Дона́тович Синя́вский; 8 October 1925 – 25 February 1997) was a Russian writer and Soviet dissident known as a defendant in the Sinyavsky–Daniel trial in 1965. Sinyavsk ...
(aka "Abram Tertz", under which ''nom de plume'' several ''
samizdat Samizdat (russian: самиздат, lit=self-publishing, links=no) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documen ...
'' short stories appeared),
Yuli Daniel Yuli Markovich Daniel ( rus, Ю́лий Ма́ркович Даниэ́ль, p=ˈjʉlʲɪj ˈmarkəvʲɪtɕ dənʲɪˈelʲ, a=Yuliy Markovich Daniel'.ru.vorb.oga; 15 November 1925 — 30 December 1988) was a Russian writer and Soviet dissident k ...
,
Joseph Brodsky Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (; russian: link=no, Иосиф Александрович Бродский ; 24 May 1940 – 28 January 1996) was a Russian and American poet and essayist. Born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), USSR in 1940, ...
and
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repres ...
, and in Poland to the case of Leszek Kołakowski, the philosopher exiled to the West in 1968 by the Polish Communist Party, and who became one of the magazine's defining contributors, whose blend of intellectual history and anti-Soviet militancy made him a sort of Slavic cross between Isaiah Berlin and Sidney Hook. A special 65-page anthology in April 1963, "New Voices in Russian Writing," presented, with the aid of translations by poets
W. H. Auden Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...
, Robert Conquest, Stanley Kunitz and Richard Wilbur, a selection of the latest works of the rising generation of Russian poets and short-story writers, among them
Andrei Voznesensky Andrei Andreyevich Voznesensky (russian: link=no, Андре́й Андре́евич Вознесе́нский, 12 May 1933 – 1 June 2010) was a Soviet and Russian poet and writer who had been referred to by Robert Lowell as "one of the ...
, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, and
Vasily Aksyonov Vasily Pavlovich Aksyonov ( rus, Васи́лий Па́влович Аксёнов, p=vɐˈsʲilʲɪj ˈpavləvʲɪtɕ ɐˈksʲɵnəf; August 20, 1932 – July 6, 2009) was a Soviet and Russian novelist. He became known in the West as the aut ...
(" Matryona's Home," the most-read short story by Solzhenitsyn, was held over until the next issue).


Focus on decolonized nations

As for the nations of the so-called developing world, thanks in part to Spender's early attention to matters ''echt''-English, the aftermath of the
British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...
not least, Indian affairs, especially as they involved writers and intellectuals, were prominent on the contents page, with the heterodox essayist and memoirist
Nirad Chaudhuri Nirad Chandra Chaudhuri CBE (23 November 1897 – 1 August 1999) was an Indian writer. In 1990, Oxford University awarded Chaudhuri, by then a long-time resident of the city of Oxford, an Honorary Degree in Letters. In 1992, he was made an hon ...
among the earliest of the magazine's long-serving correspondents from the subcontinent. Lasky, for his part, having written and published ''Africa For Beginners'' in 1962, made a point of devoting a special issue to that continent, along with others devoted to Asia and Latin America.


Changing times

The 1960s would prove to be the high-water mark of ''Encounter''s time on the world newsstand. As distinguished symposiasts from diverse spheres debated in its political sections such matters as the advisability of Britain's entry into the
European Economic Community The European Economic Community (EEC) was a regional organization created by the Treaty of Rome of 1957,Today the largely rewritten treaty continues in force as the ''Treaty on the functioning of the European Union'', as renamed by the Lisbo ...
, the expansion of its tax-funded higher-education system, the aftermath of empire and the strains of assimilating the influx of immigrants from the decolonized nations, and the latest false dawn for socialists in Cuba, a rising generation of critics and scholars engaged the newly arrived high thinkers of the age –
Clifford Geertz Clifford James Geertz (; August 23, 1926 – October 30, 2006) was an American anthropologist who is remembered mostly for his strong support for and influence on the practice of symbolic anthropology and who was considered "for three decades. ...
,
R.D. Laing Ronald David Laing (7 October 1927 – 23 August 1989), usually cited as R. D. Laing, was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illnessin particular, the experience of psychosis. Laing's views on the causes and treatment of ...
,
Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss (, ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anth ...
, Konrad Lorenz,
György Lukács György Lukács (born György Bernát Löwinger; hu, szegedi Lukács György Bernát; german: Georg Bernard Baron Lukács von Szegedin; 13 April 1885 – 4 June 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, literary historian, critic, and aest ...
,
Marshall McLuhan Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his ...
– and speculated on the prospect of other false dawns in culture rather than politics. In the case of the imagined Arcadia presaged by the new wave of "high pornography", reformers like
Olympia Press Olympia Press was a Paris-based publisher, launched in 1953 by Maurice Girodias as a rebranded version of the Obelisk Press he inherited from his father Jack Kahane. It published a mix of erotic fiction and avant-garde literary fiction, and is bes ...
founder Maurice Girodias weighed in for the defense, with conservative sociologist
Ernest van den Haag Ernest van den Haag (September 15, 1914 – March 21, 2002) was a Dutch-born American sociologist, social critic, and author. He was John M. Olin Professor of Jurisprudence and Public Policy at Fordham University. He was best known for his contri ...
countering with a measured defense of the social need for both pornography and censorship, with the young
George Steiner Francis George Steiner, FBA (April 23, 1929 – February 3, 2020) was a Franco-American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist, and educator. He wrote extensively about the relationship between language, literature and society, and the ...
, dissenting from what to him seemed the neo-totalitarian import entailed by the literal stripping of literary characters of any vestige of privacy, in contrast to the more artful metaphoric indirections of such masters as Dante.


English poets

''Encounter'' was eclectic in the poets it published. Its literary co-editors generally had a background in poetry, with Spender succeeded by the literary critic Frank Kermode. There were the critics, novelists and poets Nigel Dennis (1967–70) and
D. J. Enright Dennis Joseph Enright OBE FRSL (11 March 1920 – 31 December 2002) was a British academic, poet, novelist and critic. He authored ''Academic Year'' (1955), ''Memoirs of a Mendicant Professor'' (1969) and a wide range of essays, reviews, anthol ...
(1970–72), and the poet
Anthony Thwaite Anthony Simon Thwaite (23 June 1930 – 22 April 2021) was an English poet and critic, widely known as the editor of his friend Philip Larkin's collected poems and letters. Early years and education Born in Chester, England, to Yorkshire par ...
(1973–85). Poets affiliated from the 1950s with The Movement
Kingsley Amis Sir Kingsley William Amis (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of social ...
, Robert Conquest, Donald Davie, Enright, Thom Gunn, Elizabeth Jennings,
Philip Larkin Philip Arthur Larkin (9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985) was an English poet, novelist, and librarian. His first book of poetry, '' The North Ship'', was published in 1945, followed by two novels, '' Jill'' (1946) and '' A Girl in Winter'' (1 ...
, and
John Wain John Barrington Wain CBE (14 March 1925 – 24 May 1994) was an English poet, novelist, and critic, associated with the literary group known as " The Movement". He worked for most of his life as a freelance journalist and author, writing and rev ...
–contributed to the magazine, in many cases, in fiction and in essays also. Conquest, an independent historian of the Stalin years in Russia (''
The Great Terror The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secret ...
'', 1968), held a skeptical attitude toward left-liberalism. Amis published in ''Encounter'' in 1960 an article against the expansion of higher education, that proved influential.


Left-liberals vs. early neoconservatives

The more explicit development of that very skepticism, as it happened, came to mark the evolution of the political side of ''Encounter'' as it entered the 1970s and beyond. The ideological fissures in the world of Anglo-American political/literary journals began to see hairline crack turn to outright cleavage in the wake of the rise of the neoconservative movement. The biweekly ''
New York Review of Books New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...
'', founded in 1963, began to enlist from its outset a regular roster of the cream of the very sort of prestige British humanists and scientific essayists who had so distinguished themselves in the pages of ''Encounter'' in its first ten years, creating a rival outlet for them whose greater prominence in the much larger American market would only deepen after the 1967 high-profile resignations of Spender and Kermode, both of them at the very summit of Anglo-American literary life. The then largely intra-Democratic rifts issuing from reactions to, for instance, the Vietnam War, student radicalism and the New Left, urban strife, the
Great Society The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65. The term was first coined during a 1964 commencement address by President Lyndon B. Johnson at the University ...
, the rise of Black Power and affirmative action, played out on the contents pages of the highbrow journals in a sharpening of sides among the political contributors to the liberal-to-radical (in politics if not in art and literature) ''New York Review'' in opposition to the post-1970 rightward shift of ''Commentary'' under Norman Podhoretz; the ''New York Review'' had already as of its third year (1965, when Kristol and Bell founded ''The Public Interest'') shed the future neoconservatives who had marked its first two years. Another sign of the times came in 1972, when Daniel Bell, firmly of the social-democratic, anti-Stalinist, Old Left/Menshevik tendency, resigned from his co-editorship of ''The Public Interest'', rather than strain his long friendship with Irving Kristol, who had recently left the Democratic fold and come out, for Richard Nixon, easing into his final four decades in the ideological orbit of, e.g., the editorial page of '' The Wall Street Journal''. Some among the nascent neoconservatives, like Bell's successor
Nathan Glazer Nathan Glazer (February 25, 1923 – January 19, 2019) was an American sociologist who taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and for several decades at Harvard University. He was a co-editor of the now-defunct policy journal ''The Pu ...
, would remain Democrats, while others would form the
Reagan Democrats A Reagan Democrat is a traditionally Democratic voter in the Northern United States, referring to working class residents who supported Republican presidential candidates Ronald Reagan in the 1980 or the 1984 presidential elections, or George ...
and go on to play a pivotal role in the 1980 and 1984 elections.


1970s

The economic crisis of the 1970s, afflicting all the world's advanced democracies with a corrosive blend of decade-long inflation, sector-wide industrial strikes, overburdened welfare states expanded under pressure of an affluence-driven "revolution of rising expectations", the overturning of the supremacy of
Keynesian economics Keynesian economics ( ; sometimes Keynesianism, named after British economist John Maynard Keynes) are the various macroeconomic theories and models of how aggregate demand (total spending in the economy) strongly influences economic output ...
under a simultaneous inflation and recession long thought inconceivable, and the resulting unraveling of the postwar, bipartisan social-democratic consensus – such was the stuff of a good portion of the debate on domestic affairs within Encounter throughout the 1970s. Those from the center-left addressing such topics included the veteran analysts of capitalism Andrew Shonfield and Robert Skidelsky, biographer of Keynes, and economic historian of Depression Britain. Among those from the developing New Right to assail eminent thinkers leftward was the Australian-born LSE political scientist Kenneth Minogue, among whose many contributions was a stinging rebuke to John Kenneth Galbraith for offering, in his 1977 documentary series '' The Age of Uncertainty'', far more wit than wisdom – a charge to which the Harvard economist replied, wittily.
Ferdinand Mount Sir William Robert Ferdinand Mount, 3rd Baronet, FRSL (born 2 July 1939), is a British writer, novelist, and columnist for ''The Sunday Times'', as well as a political commentator. Life Ferdinand Mount, brought up by his parents in the isolate ...
, novelist and political writer, then in his thirties and later to serve as a Thatcherite policy adviser early the next decade, did regular double duty as political essayist and book reviewer. And thirty years after ''
The Road to Serfdom ''The Road to Serfdom'' ( German: ''Der Weg zur Knechtschaft'') is a book written between 1940 and 1943 by Austrian-British economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek. Since its publication in 1944, ''The Road to Serfdom'' has been popular among l ...
'' had made the name of
Friedrich A. Hayek Friedrich August von Hayek ( , ; 8 May 189923 March 1992), often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian–British economist, legal theorist and philosopher who is best known for his defense of classical liberalism. Haye ...
known among the non-economist educated public, the Austrian-born thinker, in the decade that saw his writings earn him both the Nobel Prize in Economics and a starring role in the education of the English prime minister newly arrived at its end, contributed four essays in the history of ideas, among them one on "The Miscarriage of the Democratic Ideal" and another on his cousin Ludwig Wittgenstein. Shirley Robin Letwin took the American liberal legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin to task for promoting judicial activism in his signature work ''Taking Rights Seriously'', while the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, a recent ''Encounter'' hand, examined the cultural roots of latter-day ills, and economist EJ Mishan> assayed the parasitic moral hazards arising from economic growth. And lively debate over the north–south divide, the Brandt Report, and western foreign aid to the 'Third World' was on hand courtesy of the prestigious development economist Peter Bauer and his critics.


Hazards of détente

In foreign affairs in the 1970s, ''Encounter''s prime interests, along with Euro-terrorism and Euro-communism, included the strains upon the '' detente'' with the Soviet Union inaugurated during the Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford years posed by the military buildup and underlying intentions, conventional and nuclear, of the Soviet Union, the latter's renewed adventurism-by-proxy in the Middle East and in Africa, and its ongoing abuses in human rights and in the coerced psychiatric treatment of dissidents. One of the prime set-pieces among the hawk-vs-dove needle-matches underway came with a six-installment series in which the eminent diplomat-historian — and "
containment Containment was a geopolitical strategic foreign policy pursued by the United States during the Cold War to prevent the spread of communism after the end of World War II. The name was loosely related to the term '' cordon sanitaire'', which ...
" theorist of the first years of the Cold War —
George F. Kennan George Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American diplomat and historian. He was best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly hist ...
, then in his early seventies, squared off against his critics in the form of several interviews he had granted to
George Urban George Robert Urban (born Gyorgy Robert Ungar; 12 April 1921, in Miskolc, Hungary – 3 October 1997) was a Hungarian writer, best known as a broadcaster for Radio Free Europe (RFE). Early life Gyorgy Robert Ungar was born on 12 April 1921 in ...
of Radio Free Europe, with detailed rejoinders — and another mutual follow-up round — in succeeding issues by the veteran historian of the Russian empire at the University of London's School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies,
Hugh Seton-Watson George Hugh Nicolas Seton-Watson, CBE, FBA (15 February 1916 – 19 December 1984) was a British historian and political scientist specialising in Russia. Early life Seton-Watson was one of the two sons of Robert William Seton-Watson, the activ ...
, by
Richard Pipes Richard Edgar Pipes ( yi, ריכארד פּיִפּעץ ''Rikhard Pipets'', the surname literally means 'beak'; pl, Ryszard Pipes; July 11, 1923 – May 17, 2018) was an American academic who specialized in Russian and Soviet history. He publi ...
of
Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher l ...
— the latter due in several years for a post helping Ronald Reagan plot strategy toward the Soviet Union — and
Leopold Labedz Leopold Łabędź (22 January 1920 – 22 March 1993) was an anti-communist Anglo-Polish commentator on the Soviet Union. Łabędź was born to a Polish Jewish doctor in Russia. The family soon returned to Warsaw and the young Łabędź decided ...
, Polish-born editor of ''Survey'', a quarterly journal of Soviet-bloc affairs. The exchanges, marked each time on the part of Kennan's critics by a ritual and almost incantatory deference to his stature and role as almost Old Testament wise man, grew increasingly testy on both sides, with Seton-Watson accusing Kennan of allowing his aristocratic-utopian hand-wringing over Western cultural degeneracy to vanquish his sense of the moral urgency and legitimacy of the west's need to better defend itself against a newly hardened foe, with Pipes accusing him of an overly-optimistic estimate of relaxation in Soviet military strategy since the death of Stalin, charges amplified by Labedz. Kennan, for his part in reply, fired back from several angles with a long-running complaint of his, perhaps best summarized as: nobody understands me.


Contributing literary figures

The range of literary figures, some young and others established, whose first contributions to ''Encounter'' came during the 1970s included novelists Martin Amis, Italo Calvino, Elias Canetti, Margaret Drabble, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala,
Paul Theroux Paul Edward Theroux (born April 10, 1941) is an American novelist and travel writer who has written numerous books, including the travelogue, '' The Great Railway Bazaar'' (1975). Some of his works of fiction have been adapted as feature films. He ...
, D.M. Thomas,
William Trevor William Trevor Cox (24 May 1928 – 20 November 2016), known by his pen name William Trevor, was an Irish novelist, playwright, and short story writer. One of the elder statesmen of the Irish literary world, he is widely regarded as one of th ...
, critics and essayists
Clive James Clive James (born Vivian Leopold James; 7 October 1939 – 24 November 2019) was an Australian critic, journalist, broadcaster, writer and lyricist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1962 until his death in 2019.Gabriel Josipovici Gabriel David Josipovici ( ; born 8 October 1940) is a British novelist, short story writer, critic, literary theorist, and playwright. He is an Emeritus professor, after having been Professor at the University of Sussex. Biography He was born ...
,
Bernard Levin Henry Bernard Levin (19 August 1928 – 7 August 2004) was an English journalist, author and broadcaster, described by ''The Times'' as "the most famous journalist of his day". The son of a poor Jewish family in London, he won a scholarship t ...
, David Lodge,
Jonathan Raban Jonathan Raban (born 14 June 1942, Hempton, Norfolk, England) is a British travel writer, critic, and novelist. He has received several awards, such as the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Award, ...
, Wilfrid Sheed, Gillian Tindall, poets
Alan Brownjohn Alan Charles Brownjohn (born 28 July 1931) is an English poet and novelist. He has also worked as a teacher, lecturer, critic and broadcaster. Life and work Alan Brownjohn was born in London and educated at Merton College, Oxford. He taught in s ...
,
Douglas Dunn Douglas Eaglesham Dunn, OBE (born 23 October 1942) is a Scottish poet, academic, and critic. He is Professor of English and Director of St Andrew's Scottish Studies Institute at St Andrew's University. Background Dunn was born in Inchinnan, R ...
,
Gavin Ewart Gavin Buchanan Ewart FRSL (4 February 1916 – 23 October 1995) was a British poet who contributed to Geoffrey Grigson's ''New Verse'' at the age of seventeen. Life Ewart was born in London and educated at Wellington College, before entering ...
,
James Fenton James is a common English language surname and given name: *James (name), the typically masculine first name James * James (surname), various people with the last name James James or James City may also refer to: People * King James (disambiguati ...
, Seamus Heaney,
Erica Jong Erica Jong (née Mann; born March 26, 1942) is an American novelist, satirist, and poet, known particularly for her 1973 novel ''Fear of Flying''. The book became famously controversial for its attitudes towards female sexuality and figured pro ...
, Michael Longley, John Mole,
Blake Morrison Philip Blake Morrison FRSL (born 8 October 1950) is an English poet and author who has published in a wide range of fiction and non-fiction genres. His greatest success came with the publication of his memoirs ''And When Did You Last See Your Fat ...
,
Andrew Motion Sir Andrew Motion (born 26 October 1952) is an English poet, novelist, and biographer, who was Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009. During the period of his laureateship, Motion founded the Poetry Archive, an online resource of poems and audio reco ...
, Tom Paulin, Peter Porter,
Peter Reading Peter Reading (27 July 1946 – 17 November 2011) was an English poet and the author of 26 collections of poetry. He is known for his deep interest for the nature and use of classical metres. ''The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry'' de ...
,
Peter Redgrove Peter William Redgrove (2 January 1932 – 16 June 2003) was a British poet, who also wrote prose, novels and plays with his second wife Penelope Shuttle. Life and career Redgrove was born in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey. He was educated at Ta ...
,
Vernon Scannell Vernon Scannell (23 January 1922 – 16 November 2007) was a British poet and author. He was at one time a professional boxer, and wrote novels about the sport. Personal life Vernon Scannell, whose birth name was John Vernon Bain, was born i ...
,
George Szirtes George Szirtes (; born 29 November 1948) is a British poet and translator from the Hungarian language into English. Originally from Hungary, he has lived in the United Kingdom for most of his life after coming to the country as a refugee at the ...
, and
R. S. Thomas Ronald Stuart Thomas (29 March 1913 – 25 September 2000), published as R. S. Thomas, was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest ( Church of Wales) noted for nationalism, spirituality and dislike of the anglicisation of Wales. John Betjeman, introd ...
.


1980s and end of the Cold War

The final decade for ''Encounter'', the 1980s, was marked by regular elegy for old and distinguished friends of the magazine who had aged along with it, chief among them the Hungarian-born writer
Arthur Koestler Arthur Koestler, (, ; ; hu, Kösztler Artúr; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was a Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler join ...
and the French political philosopher and journalist
Raymond Aron Raymond Claude Ferdinand Aron (; 14 March 1905 – 17 October 1983) was a French philosopher, sociologist, political scientist, historian and journalist, one of France's most prominent thinkers of the 20th century. Aron is best known for his 19 ...
. Longtime social-democrat friend of the magazine Sidney Hook died at 86 in July 1989, missing by less than six months the peaceful revolutions in Eastern Europe, previewed his memoir ''Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the Twentieth Century'' in ''Encounter'' in the mid-1980s. As
Brezhnev Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev; uk, links= no, Леонід Ілліч Брежнєв, . (19 December 1906– 10 November 1982) was a Soviet politician who served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between 1964 and 198 ...
gave way to Andropov, then to Chernenko and finally to Gorbachev, such contributors as former Labour cabinet secretary (Lord) Alun Chalfont were dedicated to exposing what they saw as the errors of assorted unilateralist disarmers in the peace movement and foes of nuclear deterrence such as the English historian
E.P. Thompson Edward Palmer Thompson (3 February 1924 – 28 August 1993) was an English historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is best known today for his historical work on the radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in ...
, as the NATO agreement to counteract Soviet SS-20s in the European theater took shape. The Polish resistance still covertly active after the crushing of the Solidarity trade union movement by martial law received ongoing coverage. ''Encounter''s range of political contributors edged closer to the stateside neoconservative orbit found in the 1980s grouped round, such as ''
Commentary Commentary or commentaries may refer to: Publications * ''Commentary'' (magazine), a U.S. public affairs journal, founded in 1945 and formerly published by the American Jewish Committee * Caesar's Commentaries (disambiguation), a number of works ...
'', the editorial page of '' The Wall Street Journal'', and the '' American Spectator''. Edward Pearce, a regular contributor to the magazine in the 1980s, claimed that ''Encounter's'' editors reassigned him from political writing to theatre criticism after he repeatedly used his ''Encounter'' column to criticise the Thatcher government. Though the literary side of ''Encounter'' throughout the 1980s featured a far smaller proportion of writers at the forefront of their national literatures as had its 1960s incarnation under Stephen Spender, and a 1983 change in cover design scrapped its austere "Continental" template in favor of a glossy look more characteristic of proverbially "slick" periodicals familiar from American newsstands, given the lofty heights from which it would recede, it still sustained its nonpolitical autonomy and ample proportions when the English poet
Anthony Thwaite Anthony Simon Thwaite (23 June 1930 – 22 April 2021) was an English poet and critic, widely known as the editor of his friend Philip Larkin's collected poems and letters. Early years and education Born in Chester, England, to Yorkshire par ...
was replaced in 1985 by Richard Mayne, an English journalist, broadcaster, translator from the French, the magazine's Paris correspondent and "M." columnist, and former assistant to
Jean Monnet Jean Omer Marie Gabriel Monnet (; 9 November 1888 – 16 March 1979) was a French civil servant, entrepreneur, diplomat, financier, administrator, and political visionary. An influential supporter of European unity, he is considered one of the ...
, architect of the
European Economic Community The European Economic Community (EEC) was a regional organization created by the Treaty of Rome of 1957,Today the largely rewritten treaty continues in force as the ''Treaty on the functioning of the European Union'', as renamed by the Lisbo ...
. ''Encounter'' published its final issue in September 1990, almost a year after the fall of the
Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the governme ...
and the collapse of Communist rule in the European satellites, and a year before the largely peaceful demise of Soviet rule itself. The magazine's end was brought about due to its increasing debts. The Bradley Foundation acquired the name a helped close down the ''Encounter'' organization in 1991.


Recognition

Thanks to the uncommon distinction, disciplinary and geographic range of the contributors it brought together in one venture, especially during the years 1953–67 prior to the CIA-funding revelations, ''Encounter'' earned regard as a high-water mark in postwar periodical literature. In a review of recent work by Stephen Spender in '' The New Republic'' in 1963, the American poet John Berryman wrote, "I don't know how Spender has got so many poems done, especially because he does many things besides write poetry: he is a brilliant and assiduous editor (I would call ''Encounter'' the most consistently interesting magazine now being published)." In the early 1970s, the American monthly '' Esquire'' said of ''Encounter'' that it was "probably not as good now as when it was backed by the CIA, but
t is T, or t, is the twentieth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''tee'' (pronounced ), plural ''tees''. It is der ...
still the best general monthly magazine going." In the late 1970s, '' The Observer'' was of the opinion that "''Encounter'' is a magazine which constantly provides, in any given month, exactly what a great many of us would have wished to read... there is no other journal in the English-speaking world which combines political and cultural material of such consistently high quality", while the ''
International Herald Tribune The ''International Herald Tribune'' (''IHT'') was a daily English-language newspaper published in Paris, France for international English-speaking readers. It had the aim of becoming "the world's first global newspaper" and could fairly be sai ...
'' called ''Encounter'' "one of the few great beacons of English-language journalism... a model of how to present serious writing." In a review in 2011 in ''The New Republic'' of a posthumous collection of essays by Irving Kristol, Franklin Foer wrote that "''Encounter''... deserve a special place in the history of the higher journalism... twas some of the best money that the IAever spent. The journal, published out of London, was an unlikely coupling of the New York intelligentsia with their English counterparts—an exhilarating intermarriage of intellectual cultures. I am not sure that any magazine has ever been quite so good as the early ''Encounter'', with its essays by Mary McCarthy and Nancy Mitford, Lionel Trilling and Isaiah Berlin, Edmund Wilson and Cyril Connolly. In his typically self-effacing manner, Kristol heaped credit upon Spender for the achievement.".


Most prolific authors

The following is a list of all authors who appeared in ''Encounter'' at least ten times: *
Dannie Abse Daniel Abse CBE FRSL (22 September 1923 – 28 September 2014) was a Welsh poet and physician. His poetry won him many awards. As a medic, he worked in a chest clinic for over 30 years. Early years Abse was born in Cardiff, Wales, as the young ...
(16) * Anna Adams (11) * F.R. Allemann (15) *
Kingsley Amis Sir Kingsley William Amis (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of social ...
(11) *
Raymond Aron Raymond Claude Ferdinand Aron (; 14 March 1905 – 17 October 1983) was a French philosopher, sociologist, political scientist, historian and journalist, one of France's most prominent thinkers of the 20th century. Aron is best known for his 19 ...
(37) *
W.H. Auden Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in t ...
(33]) *
A. J. Ayer Sir Alfred Jules "Freddie" Ayer (; 29 October 1910 – 27 June 1989), usually cited as A. J. Ayer, was an English philosopher known for his promotion of logical positivism, particularly in his books ''Language, Truth, and Logic'' (1936) an ...
(12) * Luigi Barzini (25) * Daniel Bell (16) *
Max Beloff Max Beloff, Baron Beloff, (2 July 1913 – 22 March 1999) was a British historian and Conservative peer. From 1974 to 1979 he was principal of the University College of Buckingham, now the University of Buckingham. Early life Beloff was born ...
(71) *
Bernard Bergonzi Bernard Bergonzi FRSL (13 April 1929 – 20 September 2016) was a British literary scholar, critic, and poet. He was Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Warwick and an expert on T. S. Eliot. He was born in London and studied at ...
(22) * Vernon Bogdanor (13) * Francois Bondy (70) * Jorge Luis Borges (13) *
John Bossy John Antony Bossy FBA (30 April 1933 – 23 October 2015) was a British historian who was a professor of history at the University of York. Career Bossy was educated at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he was inspired by Walter Ullmann. He ...
(14) * Malcolm Bradbury (24) * Edwin Brock (16) * D.W. Brogan (32]) *
Alan Brownjohn Alan Charles Brownjohn (born 28 July 1931) is an English poet and novelist. He has also worked as a teacher, lecturer, critic and broadcaster. Life and work Alan Brownjohn was born in London and educated at Merton College, Oxford. He taught in s ...
(42) * Zbigniew Brzezinski (10) *
Alastair Buchan Alastair Buchan (born 16 October 1955) is a British neurologist and researcher in stroke medicine. His main research interest is how to make neuroprotection a reality in the clinic. From October 2008 until January 2017, he served as the Dean of ...
(19) *
Anthony Burgess John Anthony Burgess Wilson, (; 25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993), who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was an English writer and composer. Although Burgess was primarily a comic writer, his dystopian satire '' A Clockwork ...
(13) * Alun Chalfont (10) * Michael Charlton (10) * Nicola Chiaromonte (10) * Robert Conquest (21) *
Hilary Corke Hilary Topham Corke (12 July 1921 – 3 September 2001) was an English writer, composer and mineralogist. Corke was born in Malvern, Worcestershire. He served in the Royal Artillery during World War II. His poems appeared in ''Poetry Now'' (1 ...
(42) * Maurice Cranston (33) * C.A.R. Crosland (18) * R.H.S. Crossman (17) *
Brian Crozier Brian Rossiter Crozier (4 August 1918, in Shire of Cloncurry, Queensland – 4 August 2012) was a historian, propagandist and journalist. He was also one of the central staff members of a secret propaganda department belonging to the UK F ...
(10) * Marcus Cunliffe (30) * Nigel Dennis (43) * Milovan Djilas (12) *
Douglas Dunn Douglas Eaglesham Dunn, OBE (born 23 October 1942) is a Scottish poet, academic, and critic. He is Professor of English and Director of St Andrew's Scottish Studies Institute at St Andrew's University. Background Dunn was born in Inchinnan, R ...
(52) *
Alistair Elliot Alistair Elliot (13 October 1932 – 3 November 2018) was a British librarian, poet and translator. Life He was born in Liverpool, son of a Scottish family doctor and an English mother, and educated at Asheville School, Asheville, North Carolin ...
(14) * D.J. Enright (80) * Martin Esslin (25) *
Gavin Ewart Gavin Buchanan Ewart FRSL (4 February 1916 – 23 October 1995) was a British poet who contributed to Geoffrey Grigson's ''New Verse'' at the age of seventeen. Life Ewart was born in London and educated at Wellington College, before entering ...
(37) * H.J. Eysenck (15) *
Henry Fairlie Henry Jones Fairlie (13 January 1924, in London, England – 25 February 1990, in Washington, D.C.) was a British political journalist and social critic, known for popularizing the term "the Establishment", an analysis of how "all the right peop ...
(24) * François Fejtő (11) *
Leslie Fiedler Leslie Aaron Fiedler (March 8, 1917 – January 29, 2003) was an American literary critic, known for his interest in mythography and his championing of genre fiction. His work incorporates the application of psychological theories to American lit ...
(11) * Constantine FitzGibbon (17) * John Fuller (11) *
Roy Fuller Roy Broadbent Fuller CBE (11 February 1912 – 27 September 1991) was an English writer, known mostly as a poet. He was born at Failsworth, Lancashire to lower-middle-class parents Leopold Charles Fuller and his wife Nellie (1888–1949; née B ...
(22) *
P. N. Furbank Philip Nicholas Furbank FRSL (; 23 May 1920 – 27 June 2014) was an English biographer, critic and academic. His most significant biography was the well-received life of his friend E. M. Forster. Career After Reigate Grammar School, Furbank e ...
(18) * T.R. Fyvel (27) * John Gohorry (19) *
Geoffrey Gorer Geoffrey Edgar Solomon Gorer (26 March 1905 – 24 May 1985) was an English anthropologist and writer, noted for his application of psychoanalytic techniques to anthropology. Born into a non-practicing Jewish family, he was educated at Charterhou ...
(17) * Julius Gould (15) * K.W. Gransden (17) * Günter Grass (11) * Robert Graves (13) * Herb Greer (11) *
Geoffrey Grigson Geoffrey Edward Harvey Grigson (2 March 1905 – 25 November 1985) was a British poet, writer, editor, critic, exhibition curator, anthologist and naturalist. In the 1930s he was editor of the influential magazine ''New Verse'', and went on to p ...
(30) * John Gross (18) * Paul Groves (13) * Louis J. Halle (10) * Michael Hamburger (19) * Stuart Hampshire (19) * Patrick Hare (14) * Anthony Hartley (64) *
Ronald Hayman Higham Ronald Hayman (4 May 1932 – 20 January 2019) was a British critic, dramatist, and writer who was best known as a biographer. Biography Early life Ronald Hayman was born on May 4, 1932 in East Cliff Hotel in Bournemouth, England, ...
(18) * John Holloway (20) * Sidney Hook (30) * Michael Howard (18) * G.F. Hudson (12) *
Ted Hughes Edward James "Ted" Hughes (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998) was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest wri ...
(10) * Michael Hulse (16) * Dan Jacobson (15) * Elizabeth Jennings (18) * Jenny Joseph (11) *
Elie Kedourie Elie Kedourie (25 January 1926, Baghdad – 29 June 1992, Washington) was a British historian of the Middle East. He wrote from a liberal perspective, dissenting from many points of view taken as orthodox in the field. From 1953 to 1990, he t ...
(20) * Frank Kermode (31) * Roy Kerridge (11) *
Arthur Koestler Arthur Koestler, (, ; ; hu, Kösztler Artúr; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was a Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler join ...
(19) * Leszek Kołakowski (12) * Irving Kristol (46) *
Leopold Labedz Leopold Łabędź (22 January 1920 – 22 March 1993) was an anti-communist Anglo-Polish commentator on the Soviet Union. Łabędź was born to a Polish Jewish doctor in Russia. The family soon returned to Warsaw and the young Łabędź decided ...
(22) *
Walter Laqueur Walter Ze'ev Laqueur (26 May 1921 – 30 September 2018) was a German-born American historian, journalist and political commentator. He was an influential scholar on the subjects of terrorism and political violence. Biography Walter Laqueur was ...
(26) * Melvin J. Lasky (72) * Laurence Lerner (39) *
Norman Levine Albert Norman Levine (October 22, 1923 – June 14, 2005) was a Canadian short story writer, novelist and poet. He is perhaps best remembered for his terse prose. Though he was part of the St. Ives artistic community in Cornwall, and friends with ...
(10) *
Penelope Lively Dame Penelope Margaret Lively (née Low; born 17 March 1933) is a British writer of fiction for both children and adults. Lively has won both the Booker Prize ('' Moon Tiger'', 1987) and the Carnegie Medal for British children's books ('' T ...
(12) * Michael Longley (13]) * John Loveday (12) * Edward Lowbury (10) *
Richard Löwenthal Richard Löwenthal (April 15, 1908 – August 9, 1991) was a German journalist and professor who wrote mostly on the problems of democracy, communism, and world politics. Life Löwenthal was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of Ernst and Anna ...
(39) *
Edward Lucie-Smith John Edward McKenzie Lucie-Smith (born 27 February 1933), known as Edward Lucie-Smith, is a Jamaican-born English writer, poet, art critic, curator and broadcaster. He has been highly prolific in these fields, writing or editing over a hundred ...
(15) *
Herbert Lüthy Herbert Lüthy (1918-2002) was a Swiss historian and journalist. His book ''France Against Herself'', published in the mid-1950s, criticized French traditionalism. Life Born in Basel, Herbert Lüthy attended school in Glarus and St. Gallen. He ...
(18) *
George MacBeth George Mann MacBeth (19 January 1932 – 16 February 1992) was a Scottish poet and novelist. Biography George MacBeth was born in Shotts, Lanarkshire, Scotland. When he was three, his family moved to Sheffield in England. He was educated in S ...
(14) * Dwight Macdonald (17) *
Colin MacInnes Colin MacInnes (20 August 1914 – 22 April 1976) was an English novelist and journalist. Early life MacInnes was born in London, the son of singer James Campbell McInnes and novelist Angela Mackail, who was the granddaughter of the Pre-Rap ...
(24) *
Alasdair MacIntyre Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (; born 12 January 1929) is a Scottish-American philosopher who has contributed to moral and political philosophy as well as history of philosophy and theology. MacIntyre's '' After Virtue'' (1981) is one of the most ...
(12) * John Mander (24) * Golo Mann (17) *
David Marquand David Ian Marquand (born 20 September 1934) is a British academic and former Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP). Background and political career Marquand was born in Cardiff; his father was Hilary Marquand, also an academic and former La ...
(21) * Derwent May (11) *
Gerda Mayer Gerda Kamilla Mayer (9 June 1927 – 15 July 2021) was an English poet born to a Jewish family in Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia. She escaped to England from Prague in 1939, aged eleven, on a Kindertransport flight organised by Trevor Chadwick. Hav ...
(10) * Richard Mayne (including "M." and "R.M" of "Books Encountered" feature) (172) * George Mikes (19) * Stephen Miller (10) * Kenneth Minogue (21) * E. J. Mishan (13) * John Mole (39) * Jan Morris (pre-April 1973 as James Morris) (39) *
Blake Morrison Philip Blake Morrison FRSL (born 8 October 1950) is an English poet and author who has published in a wide range of fiction and non-fiction genres. His greatest success came with the publication of his memoirs ''And When Did You Last See Your Fat ...
(10) *
Ferdinand Mount Sir William Robert Ferdinand Mount, 3rd Baronet, FRSL (born 2 July 1939), is a British writer, novelist, and columnist for ''The Sunday Times'', as well as a political commentator. Life Ferdinand Mount, brought up by his parents in the isolate ...
(16) * Kathleen Nott (15) *
Frank Ormsby Francis Arthur Ormsby (born 1947) is a Northern Irish author and poet. Life Frank Ormsby was born in Irvinestown, County Fermanagh. He was educated at St Michael's College, Enniskillen and then Queen's University Belfast. From 1976 until his ...
(17) * Tom Paulin (16) * Edward Pearce (66) * Peter Porter (56) * Isabel Quigly (11) *
Jonathan Raban Jonathan Raban (born 14 June 1942, Hempton, Norfolk, England) is a British travel writer, critic, and novelist. He has received several awards, such as the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Award, ...
(11) * Herbert Read (10) *
Peter Reading Peter Reading (27 July 1946 – 17 November 2011) was an English poet and the author of 26 collections of poetry. He is known for his deep interest for the nature and use of classical metres. ''The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry'' de ...
(19) *
Peter Redgrove Peter William Redgrove (2 January 1932 – 16 June 2003) was a British poet, who also wrote prose, novels and plays with his second wife Penelope Shuttle. Life and career Redgrove was born in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey. He was educated at Ta ...
(38) *
Goronwy Rees Goronwy Rees (29 November 1909 – 12 December 1979) was a Welsh journalist, academic and writer. Background Rees was born in Aberystwyth, where his father was minister of the Tabernacle Calvinistic Methodist Church. The family later moved to ...
(including as columnist " .) (158) * Jean-François Revel (61) * Eric Rhode (13) *
Theodore Roethke Theodore Huebner Roethke ( ; May 25, 1908 – August 1, 1963) was an American poet. He is regarded as one of the most accomplished and influential poets of his generation, having won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1954 for his book '' The W ...
(11) * David Rokeah (18) *
Alan Ross Alan John Ross (6 May 1922 – 14 February 2001) was a British poet, writer, editor and publisher. Early years Ross was born in Calcutta, India, son of John Brackenridge Ross, CBE, a former Lieutenant in the Indian Army Reserve ( Supply and T ...
(20) * Carol Rumens (11) * Malcolm Rutherford (13) *
William Sansom William Norman Trevor Sansom FRSL (18 January 1912 – 20 April 1976) was a British novelist, travel and short story writer known for his highly descriptive prose style. Profile Sansom was born in London, the third son of Ernest Brooks Sans ...
(12) *
Vernon Scannell Vernon Scannell (23 January 1922 – 16 November 2007) was a British poet and author. He was at one time a professional boxer, and wrote novels about the sport. Personal life Vernon Scannell, whose birth name was John Vernon Bain, was born i ...
(27) * Leonard Schapiro (10) *
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr. (; born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger; October 15, 1917 – February 28, 2007) was an American historian, social critic, and public intellectual. The son of the influential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. and a s ...
(12) *
Peter Scupham Peter Scupham (24 February 1933 – 11 June 2022) was a British poet. Life Scupham was born in Bootle on 24 February 1933 to John and Dorothy Scupham. The family moved to Cambridgeshire and he was educated at the Perse School, Cambridge, and St G ...
(10) *
Hugh Seton-Watson George Hugh Nicolas Seton-Watson, CBE, FBA (15 February 1916 – 19 December 1984) was a British historian and political scientist specialising in Russia. Early life Seton-Watson was one of the two sons of Robert William Seton-Watson, the activ ...
(16) *
Edward Shils Edward Albert Shils (1 July 1910 – 23 January 1995) was a Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and in Sociology at the University of Chicago and an influential sociologist. He was known for his research on the r ...
(22) * Andrew Shonfield (22) * Ruth Silcock (10) *
Burns Singer Burns Singer (29 August 1928 – 8 September 1964) was born James Hyman Singer in New York City. He was a Scottish poet and translator. Early life and education Though he was born in New York, from the age of four, Singer was brought up in Scot ...
(18) *
Stephen Spender Sir Stephen Harold Spender (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by the ...
(45) *
George Steiner Francis George Steiner, FBA (April 23, 1929 – February 3, 2020) was a Franco-American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist, and educator. He wrote extensively about the relationship between language, literature and society, and the ...
(24) * Christopher Sykes (31) * David Sylvester (17) *
George Szirtes George Szirtes (; born 29 November 1948) is a British poet and translator from the Hungarian language into English. Originally from Hungary, he has lived in the United Kingdom for most of his life after coming to the country as a refugee at the ...
(17) * D.M. Thomas (14) * R.S. Thomas (20) *
Anthony Thwaite Anthony Simon Thwaite (23 June 1930 – 22 April 2021) was an English poet and critic, widely known as the editor of his friend Philip Larkin's collected poems and letters. Early years and education Born in Chester, England, to Yorkshire par ...
(38) * Gillian Tindall (13) *
Charles Tomlinson Alfred Charles Tomlinson, CBE (8 January 1927 – 22 August 2015) was an English poet, translator, academic, and illustrator. He was born in Penkhull, and grew up in Basford, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. Life After attending Longton High S ...
(10) *
Philip Toynbee Theodore Philip Toynbee (25 June 1916 – 15 June 1981) was a British writer and communist. He wrote experimental novels, and distinctive verse novels, one of which was an epic called ''Pantaloon'', a work in several volumes, only some of whi ...
(18) *
William Trevor William Trevor Cox (24 May 1928 – 20 November 2016), known by his pen name William Trevor, was an Irish novelist, playwright, and short story writer. One of the elder statesmen of the Irish literary world, he is widely regarded as one of th ...
(11) *
Hugh Trevor-Roper Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton (15 January 1914 – 26 January 2003) was an English historian. He was Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford. Trevor-Roper was a polemicist and essayist on a range of ...
(14) *
George Urban George Robert Urban (born Gyorgy Robert Ungar; 12 April 1921, in Miskolc, Hungary – 3 October 1997) was a Hungarian writer, best known as a broadcaster for Radio Free Europe (RFE). Early life Gyorgy Robert Ungar was born on 12 April 1921 in ...
(13) *
John Wain John Barrington Wain CBE (14 March 1925 – 24 May 1994) was an English poet, novelist, and critic, associated with the literary group known as " The Movement". He worked for most of his life as a freelance journalist and author, writing and rev ...
(42) *
Vernon Watkins Vernon Phillips Watkins (27 June 1906 – 8 October 1967) was a Welsh poet and translator. His headmaster at Repton was Geoffrey Fisher, who became Archbishop of Canterbury. Despite his parents being Nonconformists, Watkins' school experiences ...
(10) * George G. Watson (20)
John Weightman
(86) * Peter Wiles (12) * Nicholas Snowden Willey (14) * Angus Wilson (26) * Richard Wollheim (12) *
Peregrine Worsthorne Sir Peregrine Gerard Worsthorne ('' né'' Koch de Gooreynd; 22 December 1923 – 4 October 2020) was a British journalist, writer, and broadcaster. He spent the largest part of his career at the ''Telegraph'' newspaper titles, eventually becom ...
(15) * David Wright (17)


See also

* CIA and the Cultural Cold War, for the general concept *
Congress for Cultural Freedom The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was an anti-communist advocacy group founded in 1950. At its height, the CCF was active in thirty-five countries. In 1966 it was revealed that the CIA was instrumental in the establishment and funding of the ...
- CIA program to fund European magazines * '' Who Paid the Piper?'', book by Frances Stonor Saunders published by Granta Books (UK) in 1999 (US edition published as ''The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters'', The New Press, 2000)


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Encounter Cold War propaganda Congress for Cultural Freedom Defunct literary magazines published in the United Kingdom Defunct political magazines published in the United Kingdom Magazines established in 1953 Magazines disestablished in 1991 Magazines published in London Monthly magazines published in the United Kingdom Poetry literary magazines CIA activities in the United Kingdom