What does Hollywood have against the British? Once again on Oscar night, Tinsel Town gave warmly to us with one hand — while cynically taking away with the other.

The good news is that at least nine Britons will fly back across the Atlantic with coveted golden statues.

But the bad news is that Argo — the movie that won Best Film — is yet another piece of Hollywood’s Brit-bashing junk history that casts us in a poor light.

The film, directed by and starring Ben Affleck, tells the story of how the Canadian government and the CIA managed to rescue six American diplomats from the clutches of the Iranian students who occupied the U.S. embassy during the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Although the movie is a cracker — tense and terrifying — like so much that comes out Hollywood, Argo plays fast and loose with the facts. And unsurprisingly, the Brits are given a real pasting. For, according to the Affleck version of the rescue mission, the six embassy staff were refused refuge by British diplomats. ‘Brits turned them away,’ says a senior CIA character in the film.

You can imagine the outraged comments over industrial buckets of popcorn in movie theatres from Alabama to Alaska. ‘Goddamn Limeys! So that’s what we get for bailing them out during World War II.’

The truth, however, could not be more different. The British did give their American colleagues sanctuary. Far from being cowards, the Brits were heroes. Many of the British diplomats then stationed in Iran are still alive — and they’re fuming.

‘When I first heard about this film, I was really quite annoyed,’ says Sir John Graham, 86, who was our man in Tehran at the time of the crisis. Sir John is understandably concerned that Argo will become accepted as the definitive history of what happened. He may have a point(...)