Linford began to work for the
Manchester Guardian at 18 years old at its offices on Cross Street, Manchester. She was an assistant to the advertising department, and was later appointed as the only woman in the senior editorial team while in her 20s, and remained the only woman on the team until 1944, when
Mary Crozier joined the staff. From 1917, she wrote theater reviews for the paper; many of these had no
byline, and were identified only by her initials ("M.A.L."). In the aftermath of the
First World War, the
Manchester Guardian helped raise money for a
Quaker mission to help war victims, with whom Linford traveled to see how the money was being spent. As her page was suspended in 1939 following the onset of the
Second World War, she joined the
Women's Voluntary Service (WVS); however, she did night work as a picture editor and wrote occasional pieces for women's magazines until the 1950s. ==Novels and other work==