Thirty years ago, Mátyás Sárközi was asked by a renowned Oxford publishing house specializing in that area to compile a Budapest bibliography. His task was to write a short, 5-10-line review of every book that had ever been published in English about Budapest, or that mentioned the city. In the preface he wrote the following: when the British or American tourist arrives to Budapest, he should leave his downtown hotel room and go up to the Castle district and experience the beginnings of this city. In other words, Mátyás Sárközi has always been interested in the Castle district, despite the fact that he had little to do with it before 1956, when he defected to England at the age of 19.

He was born near Városmajor park, in Nyúl utca in the second district, and only rarely went up to the Castle district.  For example when his father took him as a child to see the changing of the guards in the court outside the Palace. Later, he and his brother Ádám Horváth (who later became a director) were both sent to a boarding school, notably the one founded by Gábor Sztehlo in Zugliget, called Gaudiopolis, the famous Children's Republic, for their mother, Márta Sárközi, spent all her time working as an editor for the literary periodical Válasz, as the wheelhorse of Gyula Illyés, the famous poet. The enterprise went bankrupt in 1949, and the family had to move to a small, one-room house in Zugliget, but the ties with the writers and poets remained. "During the terrible years of the Rákosi-era, every Sunday, a group of 20-25 people met in our house and talked about politics in the hope of a better future. Great individuals such as István Bibó, Gyula Illyés, László Németh, Lőrinc Szabó, Béni Ferenczy, Miklós Borsos and many others," he remembers from many years ago. It was from here, in Zugliget, that he defected to the West on 29 November 1956, and by Saint Nicholas' Day, on 6 December, he had reached London. For decades, he kept in touch with his relatives solely by correspondence. In 2003, he published the letters his mother had written to him along the years, entitled Letters from Zugliget. In London he graduated from the College of Arts with the intention of becoming an illustrator, but before he had a chance to begin, he went to work for the Hungarian department of the BBC, where he remained for forty years, until the department was closed down.

So why is it that he has now written a book about the Castle district and its residents? The answer can be found in the works of Gyula Krúdy and Sándor Márai. Four years ago, it was a literary quotation that inspired him to write the book. Gyula Krúdy wrote somewhere that Király utca (King Street) was the most genuinely "Pest" street in the city. "And he must have known, since he lived there with his first wife, Satanella, in the famous Pekáry-house," says Sárközi, showing off his knowledge of local history. Although he had no ties whatsoever with that area of the city, as someone who loves Budapest, he set off along Király utca to find out whether today, at the beginning of the 21st century, there is still some truth in Krúdy's words. He summed up his experiences in a little book that was subsequently published by Kortárs publishing house. Friends, acquaintances and readers urged him to write in the same light, but sociographic style about other famous streets of Budapest. But at the time, he thought he would prefer to write short stories and novels, and not this kind of descriptive prose, which would also require doing research.

He was inspired by another literary quotation, one written by Márai. In two of his works, we can read about how, in his opinion, living in the Castle district is an ideological choice, a way of viewing the world. "I must admit that decades ago, when I was reading his novel Divorce in Buda, I failed to capture this piece of wisdom - which he wrote in 1935 - away somewhere in my memory. It was only when one of the readers of the book about Király utca brought it up that I felt I should set off on another voyage of exploration," Sárközi recalls how his tour of the Castle district started. And when a friend of his, a historian, lent him the list of names of everyone who lived in Úri utca in 1928, he knew that he would end up writing a book about it. From this register, he found out that in the late 1920's, aristocrats lived in almost every house or palace in the street. Dukes, barons and counts. "Not only did I want to find out whether the bourgeois, sometimes old conservative views still existed among Castle district inhabitants, for there are now only a few original inhabitants on the plateau of Castle Hill, but also what condition the Hungarian middle-class is now in, at the beginning of the 21st century."

And so Mátyás Sárközi set off and roamed all the streets of the district. "Now I can honestly say that I know the Castle district," he tells us as we walk along all those spots that made the greatest impressions on him. And meanwhile, he tells us about the book. "The book, entitled True dwellers of the Castle (Vérbeli várbeliek), is not a scientific essay, it's much rather a colourful description of those who live in the Castle district today, relating the the legends that these houses of the past centuries tell us, for nearly all of them are historic buildings." His favourite street is Tárnok utca, where, in his view, the most attractive building of the Castle district stands, and that is the Golden Barrel Restaurant (Aranyhordó étterem). His favourite anecdote is the legend of the Hadik-statue: since the (four-leaf) clover brings good luck (translator's note: clover is lóhere in Hungarian, but lóhere also means the horse's testicles), students of the technical university - whose dormitory was in the building of the former Ministry of Finance - before taking an exam, used to touch the said part of the statue of András Hadik's horse. Even today, tourists continue this tradition. That is why certain anatomical parts of the statue are still so smooth and shiny. When Mátyás Sárközi's new book about the Castle district was introduced a couple of weeks ago at the Hungarian Cultural Centre in London, a descendant of the Hadik family was also present. The writer, slightly reluctantly, told him about the anecdote concerning the Hadik equestrian statue, but the man's only remark was this: I'm pleased that my family continues to be of use to Hungarian society.

In Balta köz (a small alley), Mátyás Sárközi calls our attention to a fine little shop where you can buy, tasty rétes (strudel). "The antique fountain in the courtyard was originally bought by Alajos Stróbl. And on every March 15th, the descendants of the Stróbl family continue the tradition of having wine flow from it instead of water," relates Sárközi yet another story. We move from house to house, and he shows us that in most houses, the sediliae (stone seats) still exist at gate entrances.

But it was not only from the outside that Mátyás Sárközi saw these houses when he was writing the book: he saw many of the flats from the inside, and got acquainted with some colourful personalities. As it happened, one person recommended another as someone who they thought knew a lot about the history of the Castle district. He also found it quite exciting, from an architectural point of view, that many of the rooms in these houses had arched walls and ceilings. "One cannot help but marvel that despite all the devastation during the war, so many beautiful pieces of furniture and art objects have remained intact. One of the most important lessons to be learned is that the middle class considers the preservation of values and saving the old life-style as one of its main tasks," he says. And of course another wonderful thing about the Castle district is that on the Duna side looking east towards Pest, you get one of the most spectacular views in all of Europe.

As for the answer to his original query: is living in the Castle district really an ideological choice, a view of the world?,  he had to discover the past of those who live here today. And it is on the basis of this information and experience that he now tells us today, three different layers of society live in the Castle district. First, there are the natives - for example the lady on the book cover, who has lived for 95 years in the house she was born in. The second group is made up of those who were brought in place of those aristocrats and members of the upper middle-class who had escaped after the war or had been deported in 1951. Their ideology is perhaps different, but it is without doubt that they, too, now have some of the assertiveness and self-consciousness of the Castle-dwellers. The third group consists of Hungarian artists and the nouveaux-riche, who have discovered in the past fifty years how wonderful it is to live in the Castle district. "When the hordes of tourists move on, the Castle turns into a small town," he remarks, while we try to avoid all the foreigners walking past.

The Castle society depicted by Sándor Márai has disintegrated, says Mátyás Sárközi at the end of our walk. Beside his home in London, he also has a flat here on Sváb Hill. In other words, he feels at home in two different places. But those who live here know that they are privileged - and the self-consciousness of the Castle citizen is present in them without the air of superiority.