The years between the publication of Childe Harold and Byron's final departure from England in the spring of 1816 were years of private turmoil, public fame, and public notoriety. These were the only years when he was directly involved in British politics, both as a member of the House of Lords and more generally in his identification with the Holland House Whig group. Byron's first speech in the Lords on the frame-breakers’ Bill had been very dependent on the party line. His later speech on Catholic emancipation, though passionate, was less well judged from a party point of view, and though his fame was no doubt for a while a useful party asset, it became clear that Byron was not a party animal. His presentation of a petition for parliamentary reform was a positively radical move, but destined to failure. He had little interest in compromises driven by power balances and internecine strife – and, consequently no doubt, little skill. But he did involve himself in the committee work of the House – he was always more practical than his reputation might suggest. Always on the side of the outsider, Byron was by temperament a radical, but equally never an idealist. He could not join the ‘radical’ establishment, any more than the establishment. Despite his identification by the Tory press as one of the political enemy, these years are dominated in reality by his affairs and his disastrous marriage. They are the years of the writing of the Turkish Tales, which were a runaway popular success, but for which he was castigated as a lightweight by his enemies in the press, and of the Hebrew Melodies, which contain many of his best known lyric poems.

Byron's sexual affairs, which were bisexual and possibly primarily homosexual during his early travels, were predominantly heterosexual during his years of fame in England. When under the influence of cultures in which bisexuality was the norm – whether in Cambridge or in Greece – Byron was bisexual; in cultures where it was not, he seems to have been heterosexual. In both, his appetite was clearly strong – from one of his household in Newstead to Lady Oxford, class was never a barrier, either to sex or to affection.