Surveillance, secret assignations and subterfuge are the usual images conjured when one thinks of the glamorously portrayed world of espionage.

Less commonly thought of are the mounds of paperwork and tedious sifting through innocent communications that comprised the daily reality of most of those involved in Allied intelligence circles during the Second World War. Philatelists, whose attention is focused on the outside of the envelope rather than its contents, have made a study of the marks left by those literally underground units of the espionage web who sifted through tons of letters which passed through Bermuda during the war.

Their findings have been presented in a new publication Intercepted in Bermuda published by The Collectors Club of Chicago.

This study, subtitled The Censorship of the Transatlantic Mail during the Second World War, by Peter A. Flynn, is the result of much laborious research conducted with the help of Michel Forand and Bermuda resident Horst Augustinovic.

This meticulously compiled catalogue of censor devices is not aimed at a general audience, but is written specifically for ?collectors of censored material? to whom ?the appeal of covers that bear evidence of having been examined by as many as four or five different censorship systems? is irresistible.

This includes tables of different sorts of labels used by Bermuda-based censors and their frequency, the types of hand stamps employed, the examiner numbers and their earliest and latest recorded usage date, and the arrival and departure dates of every flying boat passing through Bermuda during the period May 1939 to December 1945, its point of origin and its destination.

Illustrations of postal covers show the variations in the types of labels used and the other censor devices.

The intention of the book is to present ?the evolution, nature, scope and consequences of transatlantic mail examination in Bermuda by British Imperial Censorship of Posts and Telegraph during the Second World War?.

The contribution of postal censorship to the ending of the Second World War is discussed in general terms.

Censorship activities are set in the context of the war as a whole, as is the development of postal air service globally during that period through a selected chronology of war, aviation and censorship events and a chapter on the history of censorship.

There is less written about the human element of the process, partly due to lack of information.

Many of the official documents pertaining to censorship remain classified or unresearched.

?Little is known about the actual physical arrangements of the various premises where the censors lived and worked,? the author acknowledges, though space is given to a description of the organisational structure and the responsibilities of the various sections.

?The examiners were the key to the success or failure of the censorship system? but remain largely anonymous.

What information is given in the tables and lists is the known examiner numbers, the commonest label styles identified for each examiner and the first and last dates for each examiner based on the postmark.

The significance of the Bermuda Censorship Station to Allied intelligence successes against the Nazis is mentioned, but the main focus of the book is the process, not the outcome.

A useful reference for scholars, the appeal of this publication to the general reader will be less marked.

Intercepted in Bermuda by Peter A. Flynn can be obtained by directing inquiries to Horst Augustinovic at netlinkcwbda.bm or by telephoning 295-4600.