His philosophical detachment from his 2019 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnosis makes for a brief but telling episode. In lesser hands, equating his illness-induced disdain for a baked potato with Napoleon’s soldiers dying on the return from Moscow would be faintly ludicrous. In Brearley’s, it is desperately poignant. The title of this book comes from a remark made about Brearley’s conversational manner by an American sports journalist. Brearley, he wrote, spoke “as though he had been turning over pebbles, searching for the clearest, most precise [...] opinion to plop into the pool of conversation.” Brearley’s accounts of half a life in sport followed by another half as a psychoanalyst share that quality. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. All of those are good reasons to spend some time in self-reflection and refresh your plans for the next six months.

From 1st July 2021, VAT will be applicable to those EU countries where VAT is applied to books - this additional charge will be collected by Fed Ex (or the Royal Mail) at the time of delivery. Shipments to the USA & Canada: This is followed by a revisitation of Brearley’s appearance on Radio 3’s Private Passions, exploring his choices of classical music, including a perhaps surprising selection of Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy, then onto a fascinating chapter on Bion, a seminal influence on Brearley personally and professionally. A World War One Tank officer, Bion won the DSO, laconically remarking: “I think I might with equal relevance have been recommended for a court martial. It all depended on the direction which one took when one ran away.” This could probably apply to everyone, in one way or another. Studies show that when we reflect on past challenges, we increase our self-efficacy and resilience, thus helping us make progress and overcome challenges in the future.

The book concludes with Brearley confronting his own mortality. Having survived two brushes with cancer, at eighty he is a relatively healthy and certainly happy man, tempering his pleasure in life with the inevitable knowledge that each annual landmark may be rolling around for the last time. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? Philosophy didn’t hurt either. Both for what it said and what it provoked in Brearley. Wittgenstein’s image of philosophy as a way of showing the fly out of the fly-bottle is unsatisfactory, says Brearley. “It sounds as though it might be done once and for all simultaneously. Reality is more complex; our reasons for being trapped are more deep-seated, and the ways in which resistance to insight and to change occurs are multiple.”

For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. A strong merit is the depth in which various issues are aired, and the ability to articulate and appreciate different points of view other than his own – rarely is he opinionated or intransigent. Among those considered are the clash between sports lovers and culture lovers over which is the higher intrinsic value, the benefits or otherwise of studying Classics at university, and different interpretations of literary writers. He was sceptical about the attractions of working for the Civil Service, yet allowed himself to be interviewed for the position of a spy based overseas! Then I saw Sam Mendes’s film about Ben Stokes. I knew about the court case [when Stokes was charged with, and eventually cleared of, affray in 2017] and his father dying but suddenly you see the same thing in Stokes. He had also been depressed and he eventually overcame it by lifting the game to another level. I’m thinking particularly of the more optimistic, almost manic, side which means Stokes believes one should never play for a draw. I don’t agree as there have been some great achievements in playing for a draw and always going for the victory is a bit over the top. But that may be part of what enthused the team. I was really interested to read Stokes saying he would do the same against Australia.” There is unity, of a kind, in all this, but one needs to put oneself in Brearley’s hands to let him reveal it – and himself – in his own way. His reminiscences of the neglected Cambridge philosophers with whom he had once studied (John Wisdom, Renford Bambrough) will be new even to those who have heard all his tales of playing with Gower and Gatting. His gentle explanations of the theories of the philosophers and psychoanalysts who influenced him – Ludwig Wittgenstein and Marion Milner among them – are accurate and accessible without feeling in the least dumbed-down.The Latin word for ‘pebbles’ gives us ‘calculus’, the study of continuous change. It may not be a coincidence that it figures in the title of the book. He writes in this new memoir, Turning Over the Pebbles, that he had “by then developed a technique organised around a fairly sound defence, a somewhat limited range of strokes, and a rather tight kind of courage against fast bowling.” That combination of judicious self-praise and candid self-criticism is entirely characteristic of his style, both during his sporting career and afterwards in his rather unexpected choice of post-retirement vocation: psychoanalysis. We listen in at various points to Brearley’s thoughts on religion. Being a spiritual, open-minded atheist, he appreciates the many benefits of religion whilst not being personally persuaded of an afterlife or any divine ‘ultimate reality’. He wanders from Jesus to Billy Graham to Ezekiel, also introducing the analyst Donald Winnicott and his views of transitional objects. It comes as little surprise that Brearley knows and respects Rowan Williams, a previously (famously erudite and open-minded) Archbishop of Canterbury. We are treated to tasty aperitifs of both Wittgenstein and Bion, and appetising entrees into their work. We hear of Brearley’s admiration for Wittgenstein’s unsparing, iconoclastic thinking, and above all his fearless drive to go his own way. Still, the watchful and the playful converge for Brearley; he artfully stitches together a memory of the aptly named Cambridge philosopher John Wisdom, visiting Brearley at UC Irvine, delightedly admiring kites in the sky: “Look how high they are!”, and echoing Wittgenstein’s “capacity for awe and reverence”. ‘“Don’t think, look,” [Wittgenstein] wrote’…’Looking, really looking and really seeing connections, is like hearing music.” But the path of wisdom and insight is not all one kind, easy gradient. Brearley applauds the unremitting quest for deep understanding in Wittgenstein: ‘What is the use of studying philosophy if it doesn’t improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life?’ Throughout these Memoirs, there is a refreshing use of language being employed in the way of everyday expression (perhaps a nod to Wittgenstein?). Liberal use is made of abbreviations such as: it wasn’t only, I don’t, I can’t recall, I’d read, we’ve all…Perhaps it is something that Brearley absolutely insisted on. Other publishers ought to follow suit: it’s far overdue!