This year was the first time I’ve been able to decide how we can best celebrate the day. And so we decided to try to improve the quality of the event without increasing the budget. We reduced the number of people we invited and themed the party around innovation: we celebrated the Queen’s birthday and the leaps ahead in innovation in the UK which her reign has seen. I was really pleased by the result.

We had a virtual ambassador greet guests at the door, a light projection on the reception room ceiling celebrating great British innovation, and all our sponsors brought their latest technology to demonstrate to our guests. We also hired a DJ to play ground-breaking British music from the last 60 years.

The feedback was super. Our guests loved the theme as well as the fact that there was enough space and time to talk properly with new and old friends. Of course it helped that, after 2 weeks of terrible weather, we enjoyed a beautiful early summer’s evening. The biggest hit of course was that we had as our guests of honour the shadow dance troupe Attraction – who just a few days earlier had won Britain’s Got Talent, the national TV show where the British public vote for their favourite entertainers. They are so talented! And so suddenly have become celebrities.

As I said in my speech at the event, Attraction winning made me proud to be associated with Hungary, the source to this great talent, and to be British. In how many countries would a group of foreigners win in a public vote against home-grown acts? The fact that Attraction won showed to me the true spirit of the British people: open, welcoming, generous.

Our party guests showed generosity, too. They contributed to our collection for those who suffered in the recent flooding around the Danube. We will discreetly pass the money on to the right people.

So it’ll be a year till we do this again. It’s a lot of work to prepare – and the embassy team who produced the party were absolutely exceptional. But I can’t wait for next year’s event when I aim to find a fresh aspect of Britain to spotlight and feature. If you have suggestions, do let me know!

PS Thanks for all the replies to my blog on sport. I’ve read them all, replied to a few and am looking at how to follow up on several ideas that came up. I’ll talk about them another time.

Source: British Embassy Budapest