Along with Martin D'Arcy, he was one of England's foremost Catholics of the first half of the 20th century, and was a correspondent of figures including Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, and Ronald Knox.

[3] He entered the Society of Jesus on 7 September 1897, beginning his novitiate at Manresa House in Roehampton before transferring to Aix-en-Provence, France due to ill health (a recurring theme throughout his career).

[5] According to Evelyn Waugh, he "dazzled and stimulated the most various undergraduates by his restless zeal, incisive diction, and by his modernity...[he] was loaded with academic distinctions, but he held aloof from High Tables.

In 1928 he made a trip to Australia and New Zealand to participate in the International Eucharistic Congress at Sydney, in the course of which he was involved car accident thereafter suffering from persistent headaches throughout his life.

[9] Martindale was in Denmark at the outbreak of the Second World War,[10] and was held as a German detainee in Copenhagen until its end, during which he "had the happiness of receiving a certain number of people into the Church.