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.”

We amble out into his sun-filled garden and it does not take long for our talk to return to McCullum and Stokes, a transformed England and the delicious uncertainty of how they will perform against Australia. As the days lengthen and another English summer begins, Brearley knows there will not be many more Ashes for him to savour and so this series feels meaningful. 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.” 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: 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. 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.’

If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. 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. 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.”

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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

How They Broke Britain by James O'Brien is full of anger - and not much else

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. 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.”