A pre-eminent scholar of Old High German language and literature, who taught in Oxford and London, he later became a prize-winning translator, noted for helping to establish the reputation of the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard in the English-speaking world.

He attended Scarborough High School for Boys and won a scholarship to study at Queen's College, Oxford, gaining a First in French and German in 1952.

[2] One of his Oxford pupils was John le Carré and McLintock "liked to think that George Smiley's affectionate references to German studies owed something to his tutorials".

[1] In A Perfect Spy, le Carré describes his protagonist Pym's dedication to McLintock's disciplines: By the end of his first term he was an enthusiastic student of Middle and Old High German.

By the end of his second he could recite the Hildebrandslied and intone Bishop Ulfila's Gothic translation of the Bible in his college bar to the delight of his modest court.