>>> from HTMLParser import HTMLParser
>>> print HTMLParser().unescape('U.S. Adviser’s Blunt Memo on Iraq: '
... 'Time ‘to Go Home’')
U.S. Adviser’s Blunt Memo on Iraq: Time ‘to Go Home’
The function is undocumented in Python 2. It is fixed in Python 3.4+: it is exposed as html.unescape() there.