The British Embassy has published a book on the history of the premises they have occupied for more than forty years. The building, for decades in a state of decay in the absence of a responsible owner, has now regained its former glamour. The editors, Nigel Thorpe, the British Ambassador, and Petra Matyisin, have devoted some 70 pages and a good number of photographs to the building. It can, indeed, look back on an interesting past. This beautifully designed and produced volume, published first in English and recently in Hungarian, does this past more than justice.

The story begins in the early years of our century, and is less about the building itself than about the way its long or short-term occupants viewed the city, their life in it, and the events which they witnessed and which may not have always been easy for them to interpret. The book, Harmincad utca 6: A Twentieth Century Story of Budapest, is therefore a history of Budapest and of those living at that particular address for close to one hundred years.

The five-storey building, almost rectangular in shape, still closely resembles a bank. Its builders bestowed on it the dominant stylistic features of the time that neither bombing and shelling, nor long neglect could alter. After the meticulous reconstruction it still bears many features of the former premises of the Hazai Bank (National Savings Bank). Situated at Harmincad utca 6, the building has marked one of the entrances to Budapest's historical inner city since 1914.

The present occupants thought it was important to research and publish the story of the building, which houses the British Embassy. They did not content themselves with the material found in libraries, but have complemented it with accounts based on personal experience, from those who once lived or worked in the building, or were in some other way attached to the institutions operating there. The thoroughness and attention paid to the smallest detail is best exemplified by the fact that they located and reproduced a contemporary caricature of Jenő Rapoch, once managing director of Hazai Bank, which was liquidated after the Second World War. After all, he too belongs to the story. So does Lajos Gellért, a celebrated cartoonist of the 1920s, who published his sketches of prominent figures in the Hungarian capital in limited editions. Had he been waiting in the bank ready to capture the features of illustrious figures of later Budapest society, he would not have been disappointed: the clientele of the bank in the 30s included many an acclaimed author, artist, politician and aristocrat.

The story of the site and the building, one of the finest examples of Neo-Classicism related to the Viennese Sezession in the capital, will be discussed elsewhere in this issue by Pál Ritoók. Completed in 1914, it was the head office of Hazai Bank, founded in 1892 with a registered capital of ten million crowns; by the time they moved into the building, its capital had quadrupled. The architect, Károly Rainer, was not tight-fisted with the decorative elements aimed at heightening the prestige of the bank: the ceiling of the banking hall is made up of stepped glass; the wide staircases are flanked by slim columns; inside, above the entrance, are Egyptian motifs, such as the two sphinxes holding a giant clock between them. The entrance hall is divided into three by four pairs of pink marble Doric columns; above the glass-panelled entrance to the banking hall, was a fish-scale fanlight decoration. The stepped glass ceiling was designed and built by Haas and Somogyi, who employed an extraordinary device to boost the natural light, in the form of a series of electric lamps hidden above the glass. The cooling of the glass ceiling was also unique: it was done by cold water from the outside. The system was damaged in the Second World War, but the same firm who had built the original restored it. Apart from the glasswork, Haas & Somogyi were responsible also for the striking bronze ornamentation. Incredibly enough, barely two years were needed for József Mann and Son to complete the wonderful building which was to be occupied, with minor alterations, by Hazai Bank until 1946.

Those, however, were eventful years. After the First World War, the bank was worth a fraction of its pre-war market value, and it lost most of its deposits in the Great Depression of 1929. In 1934, profits were a mere 25 per cent of those of 1930. The bank took some time to recover, and its later circumstances came nowhere close to its former golden age. The bank also became involved in politics when the government of Prime Minister Count Pál Teleki, who was on the board of directors, introduced increasingly rigorous laws limiting the scope of international financial transactions and stipulating lending to finance the government deficit. During the Second World War, the accounts of Jewish clients were blocked, later all their valuables were confiscated. Despite legislation restricting the employment of Jews, the bank asked to defer dismissal of the thirty-seven Jews on their staff, including Managing Director, Jenő Rapoch, but eventually Rapoch was one of the first to go.

Although most of the Jewish assets were seized, the vault was full. "Have you ever seen a vault like this?", Raoul Wallenberg is quoted in the book. "This one keeps things more precious than money—this one keeps people." At times some fifty people were crowded in the rooms, including bank employees and their families and Jews under Swedish protection, who were unable to leave the building for days. Also quoted is Dr Ferenc Benes, then Managing Director of the bank, as saying:

We let the third floor of the building to the Swedish Legation. The most energetic member of the Legation, Mr Wallenberg, often stayed in the building. At the beginning of the siege, the Swedes were given the mirror corridor for an air-raid shelter, originally there were six of them, but in the worst days of the siege, the number of people present rose to between 45 and 50.[…] Not knowing how long the siege would last, and expecting a difficult situation afterwards, we tried to hoard large supplies of food. (...) When the siege started we began to serve simple meals: it meant nourishing one-course dishes mostly but for breakfast and dinner we were able to give large helpings of sandwiches. We had bread every day all through the siege and cooking was done in one of the mezzanine floor rooms, often accompanied by heavy shelling.

The Bank building caught fire on three occasions, and was struck by at least twenty shells or bombs. All those sheltered inside survived the siege, except for Tivadar Jobbágy, Wallenberg's Hungarian driver, who was hit by shrapnel in the street. Wallenberg himself started out on his last known mission to Debrecen, on 11 January 1945, from Harmincad utca 6. Among his final recorded remarks were references to the presence in the bank vaults of diamonds, to be used to continue his work for the Jews. However, this was never to happen, as after the Soviet army had occupied the city, the vaults of Hazai Bank were emptied of the remaining assets stored there.

The Commission [of Soviet Officers] which arrived in the middle of February in the afternoon found all the doors open and all keys available. Thus the Commission could assess its tasks and seal the doors in a matter of thirty minutes. We then invited them for tea, followed by two hours of long discussion. (...) Each of the parcels kept in open deposit was broken and their contents, typically including jewels, gold and similar valuables, were taken. Documents such as agreements, insurance policies, wills and shares were left behind. (From the record of the removal of assets from Hazai Bank by the Soviet Army, 25 April 1945.)

After the fighting ceased, reconstruction began. The bank had suffered serious damage, especially to the roof and the glass roof of the banking hall; the latter was restored by the makers of the original, Haas & Somogyi. Most of the staff returned. They could only reach the premises with difficulty since all the Budapest bridges had been blown up. Of the 35 Jews dismissed under Nazi pressure, 22 were re-employed, three did not wish to return and ten had disappeared. Life began anew: in happy testimony to this, Luca Lindner, wife of Tivadar Jobbágy who had been killed a few months earlier, gave birth to their son in May 1945.

The bank, however, was never to regain a firm footing. In 1946 it merged with

Pesti Hazai Első Takarékpénztár Egyesület (PHETE). Soon its operations were transferred to other banks as assigned by the State, and Hazai Bank became history. The new trials of the building were just about to begin. When this book was launched and the related exhibition opened, Nigel Thorpe, the present British Ambassador, said that Harmincad utca 6 was too big for the needs of the mission; there was, however, a time when space came in handy. In 1947 the Swiss-Hungarian Chamber of Commerce moved in, soon to be followed by the British Legation. The diplomats gave a new lease of life to the old premises of Hazai Bank in 1947—for about fifteen years, as it was planned.

Great Britain opened an embassy in Budapest in 1963. Between the two world wars, there was a British Legation in Budapest, headed by a Minister. In 1941 Hungary entered the war on the side of the Germans, and British diplomats left the country. Returning after the war, the diplomats found only four rooms habitable in the Legation building in Táncsics Mihály utca, on Castle Hill, and therefore rented suitable premises on Stefánia út. Then, in 1947, they were offered the use of the building at Harmincad utca 6. The building they had decided to take was a magnificent one, but they were little aware of what was ahead when they moved into premisses specifically designed as a bank and nothing else, and whose rooms were hardly suitable for offices. Despite architect István Sárkány's efforts to convert it, Sir James Cable, arriving as first secretary, had this much to say about the building which, in addition, housed a school for the children of the British and other Western diplomatic staff:

Diplomats learn to expect unusual offices but my first glimpse on 23 October 1956, of the Chancery in Budapest still surprises me. The entrance, by a dilapidated shop, would have been inconspicuously drab if it had not been guarded by two uniformed ÁVO (State Security Department) sentries armed with submachine guns. Once past these deliberately daunting figures the atmosphere of the entrance lobby, where a British and a Hungarian member of the Legation staff had been in attendance, seemed cozier, if scarcely impressive. A lucky visitor might be invited to use the small creaking lift, but many had to embark on flight after flight of steep, hard, uncarpeted staircase. The ground floor, still cluttered by the counters and the partitions of this requisitioned bank, was only occasionally used for badminton or a film show, or, in December 1958, for my son's third birthday party.

The ÁVO officers guarding the building may have seemed daunting to the British diplomats, who could never get accustomed to their presence, yet those working inside knew that the armed sentries were actually intended to discourage Hungarians who might have wanted to contact them. Not without success, for British contacts with Hungarians were limited, and the events of the '56 uprising were totally unexpected. On 23 October, the head of the Legation, Sir Leslie Fry and his wife, went to visit a scientific laboratory outside Budapest. The director of the laboratory was suddenly called away in mid-talk, and the visitors sensed that their presence, despite the initial welcome, had become inconvenient. On their way back to the city, uncomprehending, they saw large crowds, some carrying Hungarian flags with the Communist emblem cut out of the middle. When they got back to an already crowded legation building, they learnt what had happened. The staff were working late into the night, not leaving before midnight. Next morning they managed to get to work, but could not leave again. For a full week, the old banking premises gave shelter to diplomats, staff, British journalists. "I worked in that Legation for nearly three uneventfully agreeable years," Sir James Cable remembers. "Forty more have passed since I last set eyes on it, but I remember most vividly the few nights when its windows were lit by the glare of explosions and vibrated to the syncopated rhythm of small arms fire."

The editors deemed that the series of sentences passed after the '56 revolution also belonged to the history of Harmincad utca 6, and have published pages of police and Home Ministry documents on the grounds of which many people, suspected to be involved or implicated in the events, were imprisoned. Among the political prisoners was László Regéczy-Nagy, an embassy driver, who had been charged with acting as liaison between Árpád Göncz, sentenced to life imprisonment, and the British diplomats. Regéczy-Nagy served six years of a 15-year prison sentence, and his connection with Árpád Göncz, now President of Hungary, is still very much alive: he joined the president's staff in 1990 and retired in 1995.

After the revolution, "watchful eyes", as a chapter title of the book puts it, were following not only those Hungarians brave enough to enter the premises. Diplomats, foreign members of the legation staff and their families could not go anywhere without the knowledge and permission, often even the escort, of the ÁVO. Anyone who had entered the building came under suspicion. The authorities knew very well who did so, and not only from reports written from inside. The shop opposite the entrance was one of these sources: it was commonly believed that the ÁVO had a camera hidden in the letter "O" of the PATYOLAT dry-cleaners. Of the uniform white letters, this one was suspiciously transparent in the middle, so as not to block the view for the mechanical spying eye behind. The press translators came under especial suspicion, and in addition to performing a delicate task in itself, were frequently charged with spying. They and their families were regularly monitored and harassed, some were arrested, others merely driven into despair and forced to leave the country. A number of Hungarians continued to visit the premises and to see the films shown in the old Banking Hall. After a film, they waited behind the main door, and when it was suddenly opened wide, there was a veritable stampede of up to 100 young people, running practically in every direction until they got home.

In 1963, the status of the British Legation, similarly to those in Romania and Bulgaria, was raised to a full embassy. In a report to his government, the then Minister Ivor Pink argued that upgrading would cost Her Majesty's Government nothing but would gain a great deal of local credit. Thanks to a cultural agreement renewable every three years, the British Council, which had been banned under charges of espionage, was allowed to re-enter Hungary in the same year albeit not under its proper name. Strengthening diplomatic contacts led to the premises becoming constrained again: the embassy shared the building with the British Council figuring as its own cultural section and the school of the embassy children as well as three security officers living in flats on the top floor. Refurbishment of a building they did not own was out of the question for the Foreign Office. After the political changes in Hungary in 1990, the then ambassador, Sir John Birch, tried to persuade his government to purchase the building: to no avail, as they decided that the price asked, about ten million pounds, was too high. Eventually Sir John managed to get a deal in the form of a 25-year lease. The British Council, now under its own name again, moved to Benczúr utca, and the way was open for a long overdue refurbishment.

Nothing happened for another two years. When the reconstruction work finally began, it was first focused on the Banking Hall. Previously in use as the British Council library, the room looked dark and desolate. Nigel Thorpe quotes his predecessor, Sir John Birch: "The glass roof was black with dirt. Cracked blue lino covered the floor. Neon strip lights glared down. I was determined that it should be restored as an open space for exhibitions, meetings and receptions." The Ambassador insisted on the restoration of the original lighting, wooden floors, and repolished bronze. The initial loss of time was made up as restoration work was speeded up by royal visits. The State Visit by Her Majesty The Queen in 1993 marked out a deadline for completing the first part of the work. Eventually, the Queen officially opened the newly restored elegant Banking Hall on 7 May of that year. Earlier, in 1990, the Prince and Princess of Wales also visited the premises, providing a stimulus to clean up and repair and repolish all the marble to the entrance and the main staircase. Diana was said to have been fascinated by the building.

Refurbishment was carried out on the upper floors as well. Though lack of funds prevented full renewal, the result is still striking. So is the attention Sir John paid to detail in supervising the work. He chose the colour scheme of yellow walls and green window frames, for after walking around a lot in the fifth district of Budapest he thought it would best suit the style of the building. The end result is, in Nigel Thorpe's words, "close to that conceived by Károly Rainer." He adds, though, that "This account of Harmincad utca 6 is not complete. It is a sketch, not the full picture. But it will, I hope, give some flavour of the splendour of the building and the drama that surrounded it through the years."