Today he is mainly remembered as the designer of four book covers for Agatha Christie, who immortalized him as "Mac" in her archaeological memoir Come, Tell Me How You Live.

[4] In 1929 Macartney moved to 13 Upper Hornsey Rise (renamed Hillrise Road in 1936) in London, where in October he enrolled for a five-year full-time course at the Architectural Association in Bedford Square.

[6] He was elected an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1936, his proposers being E. W. Armstrong, John Grey and Howard Robertson,[8] and a Fellow in 1945.

Mallowan used to choose his architects from the fresh graduates of the Architectural Association,[12] and his decision was backed by the recommendation of Sir Aurel Stein, a close friend of Macartney's father.

[26] In the summer of 1936 and 1937, Macartney was with Winifred Lamb at Kusura in Turkey where he acted as site architect and drew the finds as well as maps, plans and sections for the publication.

[27] After the second season in Kusura, one member of Lamb's team, James Rivers Barrington Stewart, conducted his own excavation at Bellapais-Vounous in Cyprus.

[29] In August and September 1936, Macartney used his spare time to travel in Turkey, Greece and Germany[6] and published an article about the city of Ankara in the following year.

While "On the whole, the general disposition of the buildings and lay-out of the streets seems to be quite good", he says of the administrative quarter that "the whole thing is on such an enormous scale that it is quite impossible to appreciate the way in which the various vistas and axes are handled.

Furthermore, the large windows and flat roofs of the new government buildings "are rather a mistake in view of the very extreme type of climate of central Turkey".

[35] According to Crawford, "Macartney made a very good job of it, and subsequently – largely on the strength of this achievement – got an architectural post in the Cyprus government service.

While they showed an exciting moment from the plot or an important object, he depicts the setting, replacing suspense and drama with atmosphere and a sense of place.

The first book, Murder in Mesopotamia,[38] is set in the expedition house of the fictional excavation site Tell Yarimjah on the banks of the Tigris.

[43] Macartney illustrated the beginning of chapter ten: "The steamer was moored to the bank and a few hundred yards away, the morning sun just striking it, was a great temple carved out of the face of the rock.

Thirteen years later, Agatha Christie used Macartney's private background for one of her heroes in They Came to Baghdad:[48] Henry "Carmichael had been born in Kashgar where his father was a Government official.

"[50] Carmichael speaks an unusually long list of languages – "Arabic, Kurdish, Persian, Armenian, Hindustani, Turkish and many mountain dialects".

[53] In the first year he designed the residence for the Commissioner of Nicosia and two buildings for the English School as well as making alterations to the court house at Paphos.

However, during the war the entire staff of the PWD became a Royal Engineers Company,[73] and between 1940 and 1943 Macartney carried out various defence works on behalf of the naval and military authorities.

In December 1947, when he was on leave, Macartney took a small round earthenware pot to Hermann Justus Braunholtz (1888-1963) at the British Museum for his opinion.

[86] Looking for a warm and affordable place to retire, the Macartneys settled on Portugal and bought the Tapada do Falcão near Caia da Urra, Portalegre.

Following in the footsteps of his parents,[87] he also designed the garden around the house and planted pines, eucalyptus and other trees to complement the already existing cork oaks.

While it was being built, the Macartneys stayed at Quinta da Relva with the Irish author, journalist and translator Huldine Violet Beamish (1904-1965) and Helen Letitia Frazer (1918-2008), a descendant of George William Robinson.

The British surrealist painter Tristram Hillier, a frequent summer guest at Quinta da Relva from 1965 onwards,[88] was later to sign Macartney's last will and testament as witness.

The most important of these were Castro de Segovia between Elvas and Campo Maior, discovered in 1969 and excavated in 1972 by John Davies Evans and José Morais Arnaud,[89] and Monte da Faia, which they found in 1972.

[90] After Macartney's death in the following year, his widow donated their collection to the Museu Geológico de Lisboa[91] and continued their archaeological work.

His earliest known work is a perspective drawing of the interior of San Spirito in Florence, which was exhibited at the Architectural Association and was published in The Builder [93] in 1933 while he was still a student (location unknown).

Agatha Christie owned not only the original designs for the four bookcovers,[97] but also a 1935 sketch of beehive houses near Ras-el-Ain in North Syria[98] and two watercolours with views of Chagar Bazar and Tell Brak.

From his time in Sierra Leone dates a painting of the Ebenezer Methodist Church in Freetown, situated in High Broad Street in Murray Town.

(Private collection) Macartney married Fenella Frances Dora Boyle (1918-1984) on 10 September 1954 at St Mary's Church in Bishopsbourne, Kent.

Fenella, who had gained the rank of Flying Officer in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force during the war and had served in Egypt, Kenya, Mogadishu and Algeria,[102] was a painter and poet[103] who had spent much of her life painting in France.

[106] Furthermore, according to Max Mallowan, he "had inherited something of his father's talents in his capacity for hard work, his ability to come to grips with detail, his perseverance and persistence.