This should be the best way to do it.
(Reposted because the other one seems a bit slower and because those who used the code under called it htmlspecialchars_decode_php4)

<?php

if ( !function_exists('htmlspecialchars_decode') )
{
    function htmlspecialchars_decode($text)
    {
        return strtr($text, array_flip(get_html_translation_table(HTML_SPECIALCHARS)));
    }
}

?>