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All the Beauty in the World

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

Millions of people climb the grand marble staircase into New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art every year. But only a select few have unrestricted access to every nook and cranny.

They're the guards in dark blue suits, keeping careful watch over this vast treasure house. Caught up in the early days of a glamorous journalism career, Patrick Bringley never thought he'd be one of them. Then his brother was diagnosed with fatal cancer and he needed to escape the mundane clamour of daily life. So he quit, and sought solace in the most beautiful place he knew.

To his surprise, this temporary refuge becomes his home away from home for a decade. We follow him as he guards delicate treasures from Egypt to Rome, strolls the labyrinths beneath the galleries, and discovers how restorative art can be.

Bringley enters the museum as a ghost, silent and almost invisible, but soon finds his voice and place amongst the lively subculture of museum guards. As his bonds with colleagues and the artwork grow, he learns how fortunate he is to be walled off in this little world and how much it resembles the best aspects of the larger world to which he gradually, gratefully returns.

All the Beauty in the World is a moving, revelatory portrait of one of the world's great museums and its treasures by someone whose value is often overlooked: the museum guard.

©2023 Patrick Bringley (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

Who would have thought that the outstanding art book of the year would be written not by a curator or an art historian or even an artist – but by a museum guard?
Sunday Times, *Art Book of the Year*
Greek vases, an Iroquois turtle rattle, Picassos. His every word about them is illuminating. The big picture is art’s power to console and unite
Financial Times *Best Books of 2023*
Consoling and beautiful
Guardian
Hauntingly beautiful ... elegant ... a work of art as luminous as the old masters' paintings that comforted [Bringley] in his grief
Daily Mail Online
Bringley is a marvellous guide ... All the Beauty in the World succeeds joyously
Daily Telegraph
Told with real literary gusto and an impressive command of pace and shape. After finishing this book, plenty of sensitive readers will be desperate to become museum guards
Sunday Times
An uplifting memoir that recalls his time behind the scenes there with colour, pathos and flair
Mail on Sunday
I loved Bringley’s book. It taught me how to get more out of museums, how to pay attention, and how to think differently about time
Financial Times
This absorbing memoir is also a beautifully written manual on how to appreciate art, and life. It's a must read for art lovers
Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl with a Pearl Earring
Wonderful. If you have ever been to a museum and stood motionless before an exhibit, if you've ever looked at a painting and found yourself crying, if you have ever wondered how a sculptor could find a human body inside a block of stone, this book is for you
Natalie Haynes, author of A Thousand Ships
Author Patrick Bringley
Narrator Patrick Bringley
Duration 6 hours and 2 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781529902143
Format Audiobook
Publisher Random House
Genre Coping with death and bereavement, Exhibition catalogues and specific collections, History of art, Memoirs, Museology and heritage studies
Availability AU, GB, IE

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