Elliot was a vegetable invoice clerk in Covent Garden market, night sterilizer in a food factory, waiter, film critic, supply teacher, actor (with the English Children's Theatre under Caryl Jenner) and finally librarian in Kensington, Keele, Shiraz, and lastly at Newcastle University.[3]
Elliot's translation of Euripides's Medea was performed in theatres in London and New York in a production by Jonathan Kent with Diana Rigg in the leading rôle.
Elliot's poems appeared in Oxford Poetry,[4]The Paris Review,[5] and many other journals.
Alistair Elliot, ed. (1970). Poems by James I and Others: from a Manuscript Miscellany in Newcastle University Library. Eagle Press. ISBN978-0-9500358-5-7.