Mike Brearley, one of England’s most successful and celebrated cricket captains, is at Bridport Literary Festival on Saturday 11 November.

He’ll be in conversation with Boris Starling talking about his new memoir, Turning Over the Pebbles:  A Life in Cricket and in the Mind.

Now 81, he loved cricket from an early age.

According to the London Review of Books, when Brearley once again trod mud into the family home after a long day playing outdoors, his mother said: ‘If you carry on like this, you’ll do nothing but play football and cricket all your life.’

‘They were also an unwitting but half-accurate prediction,’ the London Review says, ‘for Brearley would become one of the most successful sportsmen of his generation by playing cricket for Cambridge, Middlesex and then becoming one of England’s finest captains.

‘But for Brearley, cricket wasn’t just a physical activity, it was also an intellectual game, offering the chance to bring closer together body and mind. When his cricketing career came to end – during his playing days he had had a hiatus as a philosophy lecturer – he eschewed sporting commentary for a career as a psychoanalyst.

Focusing on an academic career as a lecturer in philosophy, Brearley was not selected for England until the age of 34 in 1976.

He captained the side from 1977 to 1980, winning 17 test matches and losing only four. He was recalled to the captaincy in 1981 for the Ashes home series, leading England to one of their most famous victories.

Since retiring from cricket in 1982, he trained and continues to work as a psychoanalyst, and is a lecturer on leadership and motivation.

He is the author of the bestselling The Art of Captaincy and has written on cricket and the psychology of sport for the Observer and most recently The Times.

Mike Brearley will be at Bridport Electric Palace on Saturday 11 November at 2.30pm. Tickets at £12 are available from Bridport Tourist Information Centre in person or by calling 01308 424901 or online