Paul interweaves John's biography ... with accounts of her own life and lyrical readings of John's paintings ... summoning a version of the artist at her most imaginative and prolific.

At once diary and confessional, biography and autobiography and something between the two... This book lets the reader into a world of sadness, loneliness and isolation. At its heart, however, is that unexpected kernel of confidence and self-belief that the author shared with Gwen John.

Powerfully honest... Her voice is deceptively plain and her insights about her own art, as well as the choices she had to make as a woman, are both illuminating and full of courage... a beautiful book.

It is really Paul who's centre stage, and she is fascinating; I do not feel, at this point, that I could ever tire of her mind, and the unlikely, singular way it turns.

An excellent new book. . . . In a nod to the epistolary novel, she addresses her letters to 'Dear Gwen.' It's a risky conceit, but as the intimacy grows - if not with John, then certainly with us - their clarity on the grammars of gender is compelling, and utterly contemporary. Truthfulness does not run one way, any more than power and vulnerability do.

An utterly revelatory piece of art writing.

It's a work of biography, analysis, reverence, and supplication, and it's filled with buoyant representations of both Paul's and John's work. A charge runs through it, the crackly static electricity of two connected souls touching hands across a century.

Paul's prose is spare and luminous, revealing her painter's eye in attention to colour, texture, and depth... The included paintings, both John's and Paul's, are breathtaking. Fellow artists will relish this lucid look at what is required to "live and paint truthfully."

Remarkable dialectics of loneliness and desire, of love and manipulation, that Paul handles with patient - even disarming - frankness... Alongside the imaginative biography of John, and alongside the dated journal entries, the book is also a foray into Paul's past. The effect is one of a dreamscape, a mesh of past and present, as the borders between the two female artists soften and start to give.

Celia Paul, in both her painting and her writing, is a formidable guardian of her own inner life, as well as a careful chronicler of what it means to traverse a boundary that is barely perceptible, hardly there at all, and yet is the place where truth emerges, hangs in the balance, is not quite distinguishable from a lie. Letters to Gwen John...is a profound act of truth-telling made possible by the thrilling risk of tarrying at that contested border. Paul's writing is a kind of ritual, as well as a pilgrimage, in which she leads us into those hidden places where understanding is beside the point, and invites us simply to dwell with her and whomever else she summons.

A loving and inquiring text, a lyrical correspondence between two women filtered through the inner life of one. It is also an intimate cataloguing of how loneliness and desire transmute to artistic awakening.

Hatherley's urban perambulations are in the great tradition of some of the best writers on architecture and design... Over 600 pages, our author and guide present us with a very personal selection, seeking out the diamonds in the rough and finding just the right pithy observations to praise the unusual, while damning the neglect, philistinism, and opposition that often comes with the territory

A gorgeous treat... Hatherley is a flâneur with a cause. He incites his readers to engage, as he does, with what is
around them, no matter how banal it may appear at first glance, and to take nothing for granted

An intimate perspective on one of the world's greatest institutions. But All the Beauty in the World is about much more: the strange human impulse to make art, the mystery of experiencing art, and what role art can play in our lives. What a gift

This book will change your experience of museums, connecting you with the stories of those who make them possible and revealing the layers of wonder that gather in the quiet halls where art meets modern life. Bringley's keen, warm-hearted dispatches remind us - as art itself should - of our common humanity

Intimate and fascinating

Perhaps most importantly, though, All the Beauty in the World is a story about grief and about beauty, and about how inextricably the two are linked

Nails the very particular thing of spending your days in galleries, and how close you grow to the works and the people that come to see them

Illuminating and transformative

A profound homage to the marvels of a world-class museum and a radiant chronicle of grief, perception, and a renewed embrace of life

Prepare to be wooed by this memoir, which doubles as a loving memoir of the Met from one of its most inside insiders: Patrick Bringliey, who worked at the museum as a guard for a decade.

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

Bringley's memoir abounds with small details ... but it also has grander subjects to address - namely, solitude, the staying power of art, and grief. ... In the end, All the Beauty in the World is an empathetic chronicle of one museum, the works collected there and the people who keep it running - all recounted by an especially patient observer

Simply wonderful. This funny, moving, beautifully written book takes the reader on a journey that unfolds as epiphanies. It is a testament to the capacity of art to illuminate life

Few know the secrets of the Metropolitan Museum of Art like the guards who roam its two million square feet treasure, keeping an eye on its treasures. For a decade, Patrick Bringley was one of them, and in this moving memoir, he recounts bonding with his colleagues and marveling at the beautiful works of art he is entrusted to protect

A unique workplace memoir that tells the tale of the museum and the people who keep it running

As rich in moving insights as the Met is in treasures, All the Beauty in the World reminds us of the importance of learning not about art, but from it. This is art appreciation at a profound level

An empathetic chronicle of one museum, the works collected there and the people who keep it running - all recounted by an especially patient observer

A profound homage to the marvels of a world-class museum and a radiant chronicle of grief, perception, and a renewed embrace of life

Hessel's beautifully written 500-year survey is a welcome, necessary, addition to the bookshelves

Highly readable and lavishly illustrated... a rich storehouse of groundbreaking female art

Astonishing

This book changes everything. As soon as you open it, it's like you've opened a box of lit fireworks - out soars great artist after great artist. Her retake on the canon has changed it forever

Hessel possesses that rare quality of a public intellectual, whereby she can distill vast amounts of knowledge and history into something accessible, relevant and joyful

Extraordinary

Honest, wholesome entertainment

Utterly addictive

Exquisite writing and a story enriched by the power of abiding love

Full of romance, drama and snappy dialogue

Eminently readable and richly imagined

Hilarious and romantic. I couldn't put it down