Bringley, Patrick – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk Henley-on-Thames Wed, 10 Dec 2025 16:56:59 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/cropped-Bell-Background-Blue-32x32.png Bringley, Patrick – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk 32 32 All the beauty in the world https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/all-the-beauty-in-the-world-2/ Thu, 21 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/all-the-beauty-in-the-world-2/ ** THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND SUNDAY TIMES ART BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 **

A revelatory portrait of a great museum and the moving story of one guard’s quest to find solace and meaning in art

‘Who would have thought that the outstanding art book of you would have been written not by a curator or an art historian or even an artist – but by a museum guard?’ Sunday Times

When Patrick’s older brother dies at twenty-six, all he wants is to retreat. So, he does. He quits his job and seeks refuge in the most beautiful place he can think of: New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

All the Beauty in the World recounts Patrick’s time as a museum guard, keeping quiet vigil over some of our greatest treasures and uncovering the Met’s innermost secrets. As his connection to the art and the life that swirls around it grows, so does Patrick – and gradually he emerges transformed by heartbreak, community and the power of art to illuminate life in all its pain, pleasure and hope.

‘As luminous as the old masters paintings’ Daily Mail
‘Consoling and beautiful’ Guardian
‘Marvellous’ Daily Telegraph
‘A beautiful tale about beauty. It is also a tale about grief, balancing solitude and comradeship, and finding joy in both the exalted and the mundane’ Washington Post

*New York Times bestseller, Nov 24

]]> All the beauty in the world https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/all-the-beauty-in-the-world/ Thu, 16 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/?post_type=product&p=31366 ‘A beautifully written manual on how to appreciate art, and life’ Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl with a Pearl Earring
‘Wonderful’ Natalie Haynes, author of A Thousand Ships

A revelatory portrait of life in a great museum and the moving story of one guard’s quest to find solace and meaning in art

Millions of people climb the grand marble staircase into New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art every year. Patrick Bringley never thought he’d be one of them. But when his brother was diagnosed with fatal cancer he quit his journalism job, and sought peace in the most beautiful place he knew.

To his surprise, this temporary refuge becomes his home away from home for a decade. Bringley enters the museum as a ghost, silent and almost invisible, but soon finds his voice and place among the lively subculture of museum guards. As his bonds with colleagues and the art 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.

‘A beautiful tale about beauty. It is also a tale about grief, balancing solitude and comradeship, and finding joy in both the exalted and the mundane’ Washington Post
‘Consoling and beautiful’ Guardian

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