Having spent five years in North America, Kirk returned to the United Kingdom when offered the chair of Greek at the University of Bristol in 1971. However, his tenure did not last long: in 1973, Denys Page had retired from the Regius Chair of Greek at Cambridge. The following year, Kirk was elected to succeed Page and became the 35th holder of the chair. Trinity College, Cambridge duly admitted him to its fellowship. Having published the content of his Sather Lectures in 1970, his work on Greek literature continued with a translation of the "Bacchae" (1970) by the tragedian Euripides and a second monograph on Homer ("Homer and the Oral Tradition", 1977). In 1979, he briefly returned to the United States to take up a distinguished visiting professorship at Tulane University.