Turning Over the Pebbles: A Life in Cricket and in the Mind

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In fact, he did not become an exclusive homo ludens, but is blessed with an open, playful approach to life in general. The blessings didn’t stop there: he also has a first-class mind, stable temperament, capacity for hard work, and a sharp eye for the chances sent by serendipity. 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?’ 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. Was Brearley surprised how open Stokes has been about his psychological fragility? “Yes I was, but it was such a good sign that a big figure like Stokes could talk about it frankly. I have a lot of time for him and think there’s a great deal of resilience, self-confidence and a willingness to change in him.”

All of those are good reasons to spend some time in self-reflection and refresh your plans for the next six months. Yet for all those acclaimed man-management skills, this cerebral man, whose three-week stint as a carpenter’s mate was spent reading Anna Karenina, struggles with practicalities. “Making things with grandchildren is usually beyond me,” he laments.If you're coming to Coles by car, why not take advantage of the 2 hours free parking at Sainsbury's Pioneer Square - just follow the signs for Pioneer Square as you drive into Bicester and park in the multi-storey car park above the supermarket. Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. You don't need to shop in Sainsbury's to get the free parking! Where to Find Us That impression continues here in this singular memoir that eschews the traditional model of linear life narrative, boldly going where few memoirists have gone before along a meandering route, free associating about life, experiences, literature, figures in philosophy and psychoanalysis (especially Wittgenstein and Wilfred Bion), all the while identifying the meaningful threads in the warp and weft, drawing them together into a pleasing weave. We then proceed down another fascinating avenue, where Brearley fondly recollects his first reading of Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady, recommended by a university contemporary. As with so much else here, we soon move beyond easy appreciation, with Brearley considering the telling tensions between involvement and observation within James himself. It is highly probable that James wrestled with homoerotic urges for the whole of his life. His resolution of those urges was to become the eternal watcher, sublimating and reconciling his own and others’ challenged psychologies within the labyrinthine introspection of his (in)famously lapidary prose. Why do we do this? Well, whatever your intentions were at the beginning of a year, six months later, any one of the following could have happened: 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.

Deeply thoughtful, erudite and elegantly framed, this book seamlessly blends all aspects of Brearley’s life into a single integrated narrative. With wide-ranging meditations on sport, philosophy, literature, religion, leadership, psychoanalysis, music and more, Brearley delves into his private passions and candidly examines the various shifts, conflicts and triumphs of his extraordinary life and career, both on and off the field. Can life ever be perfect? Of course not: that isn’t the point of life, but that shouldn’t stop us learning from and enjoying the ride. Towards the end of this hugely enjoyable book, we have a pithy anecdote on Wittgenstein: ‘Shortly before he died, [he] said, “Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life.” He also said that fear of death is a sign of a life not well lived.’ He invokes Eliot when considering the necessarily compromised yet effective nature of one who attempts to heal out of their own injury: ‘The wounded surgeon plies the steel/ That questions the distempered part./ Beneath the bleeding hands we feel/ The sharp compassion of the healer’s art.’ Ben Stokes in the third Test against Australia at Headingley in August 2019. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian 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.Mike Brearley and Ian Botham walk off as spectators rush on to the outfield during the sixth and final Ashes Test in August 1981. Brearley remained undefeated in 19 home Tests. Photograph: Getty Images He laughs when I say I might suggest his new phrase of Benbuzz replaces Bazball as shorthand for England’s dangerously thrilling strategy. “You certainly can,” Brearley says in amusement. “It’s going to be fascinating, whatever happens.” 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. It sounds contrived, but Brearley’s skill as a knowing – although never self-deprecating – narrator makes it work. He admits to being regarded as an “odd fish” in a testosterone-fuelled dressing room, whether taking his blokey teammate Fred Titmus to see Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes (“Fred was taken with it”) or bearing the brunt of Geoffrey Boycott’s temper: “I don’t want any of your egghead intellectual stuff,” the Yorkshireman growled at him.

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: 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. Brearley lauds the fact that Stokes and McCullum don’t seem “to care too much about losing”. Would freedom from the fear of defeat be rooted in the fact that Stokes, especially, has coped with harrowing mental health problems? “Yes, I do think that has something to do with it.” 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.Deeply thoughtful, erudite and elegantly framed, this book seamlessly blends all aspects of Brearley's life into a single integrated narrative. With wide-ranging meditations on sport, philosophy, literature, religion, leadership, psychoanalysis, music and more, Brearley delves into his private passions and candidly examines the various shifts, conflicts and triumphs of his extraordinary life and career, both on and off the field.

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.” 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. 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. 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? 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!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 psychoanalysis came later, after three years as a lecturer in philosophy. In retrospect, however, everything seemed to point towards a career in psychoanalysis. Brearley links his life experiences, his academic training, and his wide reading with this eventual profession. “This valuing of the examined life,” he writes, “is what most obviously links literature, philosophy and psychoanalysis.” In another place he says, “In moves towards complexity or simplicity, music and analysis can mirror each other.” Turning Over the Pebbles is not as other memoirs. On the one hand, Brearley reveals little of himself. Who does he vote for? How does he spend his days? What of friendships and enemies? On the other, he reveals everything. We know who he is now – or, at least, in our own minds, we think we do. 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! If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month.