Guide was published in 1970, with the first (1970) and second (1971) editions being published by JDS Publications of 46 Preston Street, Brighton, Sussex. The guide was the creation of John D. Stamford, a businessman born in St Helens, Lancashire in 1939; he had apparently trained at one point to be a priest. Peter Burton (described as "the Godfather of Gay Journalism") later said that "When John D. Stamford founded Spartacus there was no gay press and although there were plenty of gay journalists, there was no gay journalism. Those of us who were involved from the very beginning had to find our material and learn to write about it in a style our readers would not have previously encountered." In 1972 Stamford was convicted for sending obscene material in the post. One year previously, he had shifted operations to Amsterdam, Netherlands, reissuing the magazine under his new company Euro-Spartacus. During the following years the magazine grew considerably, both in terms of size and sales figures, and became the most successful travel publication catering to gay men. By the late 1970s, Spartacus was receiving about 12,000 recommendation letters annually and by 1982 was speculated to have sold 250,000 copies. The magazine included translations in French, German, Spanish. The guide included information on gay bars, bookstores, saunas collected from reader tip-offs in various locales. Spartacus was later accused of engaging in racial stereotyping and fetishisation of "scantily-clad, non-white youths in exotic settings" and promoting gay sex tourism for both adult and child prostitutes. Stamford wrote in his 1976 entry for the Philippines that "I found a place where homosexuality and bisexuality were accepted as a part of life, where friendly, smiling, happy people gave of themselves for the pleasure of their foreign guests", and that "we assure you of a holiday of a lifetime in this tremendous paradise and there are no laws governing homosexuality, sex with boys of all ages is quite legal." The 1979 Guide also repeated the claim. However, in April 1980, Stamford wrote an editorial entitled "The Rape of the Third World", which condemned the actions of a minority of Western gay sex tourists who behaved inappropriately with underage Filipino boys. Stamford said he felt guilty about unleashing a 'mighty flood' of wealthy paedophiles in the Philippines and urged readers to avoid the country as 12 gay visitors were murdered in 1979. Stamford was also a firm