My conversation with... Marilynne Robinson

Re-Enchanting the human story. Belle Tindall reflects on the nature of her conversation with Pulitzer Prize winning author Marilynne Robinson for Seen and Unseen’s ‘Re-Enchanting’ podcast.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

A woman talks while tilting her head to one side.

Listen now

Watch now

Professor Marilynne Robinson was a guest that I felt utterly underqualified to interview. And with Barack Obama among her list of previous interviewers, I don’t think such a feeling was unjustified. But, nevertheless, there I was - talking to a Pulitzer Prize winning force of nature - all the while, hoping she could neither sense my terror, nor hear my neighbours rowing through the thin walls of my tiny, terraced house.

It was a surreal moment, to say the least.

Marilynne Robinson, if you are not yet acquainted, is the author of best-selling novels such as Housekeeping, Gilead, Home, and Lila and Jack. Each one a masterpiece. She has also written plenty of non-fiction, continuing to be generous with her genius.

Just before we began recording our episode over Zoom, my co-host, Justin, asked Marilynne whether she was able to somehow block the light streaming in from the windows behind her (needless to say he is the practical maestro behind Re-Enchanting), to which Marilynne simply replied: ‘many windows, no curtains.’ Oh gosh, I thought. This lady oozes philosophy.

How would I ever keep up?

I was always three steps behind Marilynne; partly because I imagine most people are, but mostly because it is a truly enchanting place to find oneself.

Well, if I’m being honest, I didn’t. When the conversation turned to the quantum realm, I was indescribably glad that Justin was there. My mind was still pondering the possible analogous depths of curtain-less windows. But I have since decided that I’m not ashamed to admit that I was always three steps behind Marilynne; partly because I imagine most people are, but mostly because it is a truly enchanting place to find oneself.

To trail behind someone so thoughtful means that while they may be onto their next thought or point of conversation, you are able to savour what has already been said, free to pick up and ponder the magnificent breadcrumbs that they have left in their wake. And when it comes to Marilynne Robinson, there are an awful lot of breadcrumbs. If you have ever read a line of a book that has struck you to the point of not being able to read on, even if only for a moment, then you are familiar with the sensation to which I am referring.

When you come to listen to the episode of Re-Enchanting, I do hope that you’ll hit the pause button as often as you need to in order to truly soak Marilynne in. I only wish that my real-time conversation with her had that on offer.

Nevertheless, here is what the view looks like from three steps behind Marilynne Robinson: it resembles a mysterious and wholistic fascination with, and (if I may be so romantic) a love for humanity. That is, both my own humanity and humanity in general. Mind, body, and soul (terms which, in themselves, are full of mystery and nuance) – the whole thing.

Marilynne defines herself as a Christian Humanist. What may sound like somewhat of an oxymoron at first, begins to make profound sense when humanism is stripped of its (rather recent) atheist connotations. Afterall, the intrinsic value every person holds just because they are a person is a profoundly spiritual and biblical concept. As Tom Holland suggests, humanism, whether one likes it or not, is rooted in, and therefore utterly dependent upon, Christian perceptions of reality. When engaging with Marilynne, whether that be through conversation or through her work, it becomes clear that her Christianity enchants her view of humanity, which in turn, has re-enchanted my own.

It is evident in the care and complexity with which she creates her characters, giving notable time and space to the intricate inner-workings of their consciousness, amplifying their inner-monologue, and focusing attention on their interior rejuvenations, how their sense of self responds to their shifting exterior contexts. It is just as obvious when you are privileged enough to observe her gently marvel over the beautiful capacities of the human mind, the innate mysteries of the human soul; the endless nuances of all that is seen and unseen when it comes to the human-being.

Goodness seems to be Marilynne’s preferred start-line. Undergirding any humanism that she may adhere to is the notion that human beings were designed and created...

It should be noted that such an admiration is not born out of an avoidance of the brokenness that human-beings are so prone to displaying. Indeed, this world does not offer any of us such a luxury. The evidence of the imperfection of humanity is easier to find than the evidence of any innate goodness. And yet, that goodness seems to be Marilynne’s preferred start-line. Undergirding any humanism that she may adhere to is the notion that human beings were designed and created, that there is an intimate creator / creation dynamic at play in the cosmos; one that is ultimately fuelled by the care of the creator for the created. There is, to borrow a phrase, a ‘givenness’ to all things.

If we, like Marilynne, choose to use the givenness of things as a lens through which we perceive reality, there is utter delight to be found.

It is an admittedly cosmic-sized enchantment, but the implications of it trickle all the way down to the detail of the every-day, the ordinary, the (so-called) mundane. If we, like Marilynne, choose to use the givenness of things as a lens through which we perceive reality, there is utter delight to be found in our streams of thought, in our capacity to collaborate with what is beyond our control. There is a deep enchantment to be found in our very existence, our presence in both space and time.

As a disclaimer, I feel that I must admit to merely scratching the surface of the conversation that we had with Marilynne Robinson here, to read this piece and not listen to her episode (or read her work, for that matter) is to settle for a minute fraction of her thoughts. Trust me when I say - you want the whole thing.

Here I am, three days on and still admittedly three steps behind Marilynne as I mentally re-trace the trajectory of our conversation. But that is quite alright with me, I’m still enjoying picking up each of the breadcrumbs that she left along the way.

Column

Culture

Migration

Politics

20 November 2025

4 min read

From MI6 to migration: the tangled legacy of empire

Britain’s security dilemmas, from LinkedIn spies to post-colonial legacies, reveal a deeper global story

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood.

Home Office.

There’s a food chain in the British intelligence services and the government offices they serve. The Foreign Office is advised by MI6, or the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) or more usually simply “Six”, which, though it would deny it in favour of claims of collaboration, looks down on the national security service, MI5, which serves the Home Office.

An old acquaintance from Six used casually to call the parochial Home Office the LEO, short for Little England Office. There’s less of that now, to be sure, as they struggle to accommodate their political masters. Foreheads were rubbed wearily at MI6’s HQ by Vauxhall Bridge when Yvette Cooper, fresh from proscribing Palestine Action at the Home Office as a terrorist organisation alongside al-Qaeda and ISIS, was made up to foreign secretary at the last re-shuffle.

Meanwhile, over the river, MI5 faces the challenge of a new home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, who may believe that the prospect of limiting leave to remain to a maximum of 20 years and confiscating their jewellery might dissuade those with ill intent against the British state from embarking on a small boat.

Taken together, these challenges make it not a good time to be an intelligence officer, or even an intelligent one. It gets worse on the canvas of large superpowers. The problems with an erratic clown of American jurisdiction are well recorded. But China is something else.

They’d be chuckling merrily at MI6, if it wasn’t so serious, at the headlines this week, suggesting that China’s principal infiltration of the British state is through agents posing as headhunters on LinkedIn. The immeasurably greater threat from Chinese intelligence has come from the global march that China has stolen in the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), the network of Chinese-sourced sensors, software and chips embedded and monitored in technologies that connect and exchange data globally.

This isn’t tin-foil hat conspiracy territory; it’s real and has been called out for years. It’s significantly why the case against two alleged British spies for China was recently withdrawn. Britain has to keep China sweet for fear of what it knows of and could do with British data. That’s a massive US problem too.

To that end, trade and co-operation are the way to keep China onside, not confrontation. It’s an example that the Foreign Office might set for the Home Office. And, indeed, the two might work more closely together (just a suggestion).

The Home Office has long acknowledged that there are “Push and Pull” factors to our immigration crisis. It almost exclusively concentrates on the Pull, by trying to make the UK a less attractive destination for migrants through limits of right to remain and by nicking their jewellery. The Push factors are war, oppression and economic deprivation and these are very much more the territory of the Foreign Office.

A big problem arises when the Home Office tries to do the Foreign Office’s job, as when Mahmood threatens Trump-style visa bans for the likes of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and Namibia. Good luck with that – it betrays a neo-colonial instinct and there, perhaps, is the rub.

We pay a post-colonial price in both illegal and legal immigration. A predominantly Christian Europe and New World endeavoured to make disciples of every nation and now many of them are coming home. Christian culture as a former weapon of oppression is perhaps overstated, but there’s some truth in it. An even more stark truth is that we have to address the Push elements of migration if we are to find common ground on which we can make progress.

Our colonial oversight left Afghanistan a modern and post-modern historical mess. Syria is almost untouchable in its post-Assad dynastic horrors. The Indian subcontinent is still a wreckage that we abandoned only some 80 years ago.

Trying to deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan or the former al-Qaeda breakaway al-Sharaa interim regime in Syria may not be so much a triumph of hope over experience as of naivety over history. But our current position with China may point a way forward. Tariff-free trade and economic co-development is a surer way to address migration crises than making arrivals unwelcome.

It’s admittedly more complicated than China. A US/UK post-colonial future will need to align neo-Christian western cultures with an enlightened Islam that concentrates on the Quranic instructions of co-existence, respect, fairness and the explicit injunction that there can be “no compulsion in religion”. But if it was easy everyone would be doing it.

That’s the call of the 21st century and it is, quite clearly, a global rather than nationalistic one. The US will need to recover its position in the world. And, in the UK, foreheads will need to be raised from being banged on desks to solve foreign crises before they wash up on our shores.