In the 1960s, Mike Brearley, having topped the Civil Services exam was interviewed for the post of British spy. The unexpected is our companion through much of what Brearley calls ‘a memoir of his mind’; his range of achievements, from the academic to the professional is astonishing. Yet, the tone of Turning Over the Pebbles: A Life in Cricket and in the Mind alternates between diffidence and confident self-awareness, contributing to its charm and importance.
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.
