From the 1960s to the early 1990s, Tindall worked as a journalist, writing stories for The Guardian, the Evening Standard, The Times, and The Independent – and for many years she was a regular guest on the BBC Radio 3 arts discussion programme, Critics' Forum.
She wrote books about Londoners as separate in time as Rosamond Lehmann, a novelist contemporary of the Bloomsbury Group, and Wenceslaus Hollar, a Czech etcher of the seventeenth century.
Her book The Fields Beneath (1977) explores the history of the London neighbourhood of Kentish Town and the spread of great cities in general, and is regarded as a seminal work of urban historical geography.
It has been erroneously assumed to be where Sir Christopher Wren lived during the construction of St Paul's Cathedral; other fantasy residents of older buildings on the site include Catherine of Aragon and William Shakespeare.
Later books by Tindall's include Footprints in Paris: a Few Streets, a Few Lives (2009), which deals with the author's ancestors and their various connections to Paris over the generations; The Tunnel Through Time: A New Route For An Old London Journey (2016), which explores the layers of history that lie beneath the route of London's newest underground line, Crossrail; and The Pulse Glass and the Beat of Other Hearts (2019), a reflection on the links that exist between valued objects and human memories.