**THE SUNDAY TIMES ART BOOK OF THE YEAR**
**A Sunday Times and Financial Times Best Book of 2023**

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

'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

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 work as luminous as the old masters' paintings' Daily Mail
'Outstanding' Sunday Times
'Consoling and beautiful' Guardian
'Marvellous' Daily Telegraph