So, Argo wins Best Picture at the Oscars. The story of the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 made for a gripping tale, packed with tension and adrenaline. It was not easy, tweeted Ben Affleck, in response to gushing praise, 'to play a role in a true story - you have a responsibility to tell the truth, as well as make a good movie' (@benaffleck).

The film - and its director's comments - made some choke into their morning cereal, such as the many hundreds of people who responded to Guy Walters' reasoned and withering critique of the flaws, errors and distortions of Argo that you can read here. Many were appalled at how Britain's role in the crisis was cruelly twisted in the movie in the name of 'dramatic license.' Others, including leading critics in the US, also pulled few punches about the film's accuracy. 'Argo: Too Good to be True, Because It Isn't' - was the headline of David Edelstein's review on NPR.

For shame, chant the critics, Argo plays too fast with the past.

One of the great regrets about being a historian is the lack of a glittering annual awards ceremony, where leading practitioners get to dress up in evening gowns, be fawned over by an adoring public and string together a few short but inane sentences to thank the neighbours’ cat before bursting into tears.

But we should, I think, cut Hollywood some slack. It is easy to forget that history is all about dramatic license. Who wants to read a boring account of the past? Which historian does not want to spice things up? And even as far as flaws, errors and distortions go – well, bring them on. Historians revel in them as cinema-goers revel in their tubs of popcorn: our job is to find the problems and mistakes in Herodotus, to tear up the textbooks about the Crusades by showing why received opinions are wrong, to challenge accepted views about the decline of the British empire – and to re-assess the past by working out who got things wrong.

As a historian, while twisting things on purpose can hardly get two thumbs up, I can't begrudge Argo. After all, the principle of shaping a story to move it along is one the film shares with many of the great histories of the past that do exactly the same thing. Try telling Arrian that it was not one tribe but another who got in Alexander the Great's way as he crossed central Asia or that he missed a bit out; or Gibbon that his assessment of the Byzantine empire as degenerate was not just unfair but flat wrong; or modern commentators in United States that their views about the Middle East, the Arab spring and contemporary Russia are poorly informed and riddled with misunderstandings. It happens.

While I never thought I'd say it (especially after the 'Bennifer' debacle – and double especially after being forced by my children to watch the giant turkey that is Pearl Harbour recently), I’m with Ben Affleck on this one. The story he tells in Argo may not be spot on. But then again, history has a funny tendency not to be: facts get in the way of a good story surprisingly often.

Much more interesting than Affleck-bashing is why there is a swell of feel-good for a triumph over adversity story involving US policy in Iran right now, and why Argo had a resonance that played so well with the Academy. Something to do, perhaps, with supporting the American intelligence agencies in part of the world where we all fear the future, and with the insecurities about the pressures on the west in a changing world: Argo is, after all, nothing if not a classic ‘get in the lifeboat story’, a tale of salvation from the jaws of disaster.

In that sense, Argo should not be judged on whether it is historically reliable; it should be understood as a morality tale which tells us who the good guys are (USA/CIA) and who the bad guys are (Iran, who else), and does not need to bother about anyone else (e.g. the Brits).

So a bit like The Odyssey, then, albeit perhaps not quite as profound (despite the Best Movie) – and I’m not sure Odysseus would be flattered with the comparison to Ben Affleck (despite his luxuriant hair). Both, after all, were entertainment – rather than great works of history.

Now, about my Tom Ford tuxedo for the historians’ award ceremony. And the nominees are….

Another one bites the dust: one more European politician has been busted for plagiarising their doctoral thesis. This time, embarrassingly, it is Annette Schavan who has been shamed into resigning. It is bad enough that she was the German Education minister; worse, two years ago, she put the boot firmly into the Defence Minister and rising star, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, saying it was 'shameful' when it was found that 90% of his dissertation was pinched from unattributed sources.

Many of my colleagues worry on a daily basis about students copying work and passing it off as their own - and complain bitterly how the internet has made doing so much easier. As it happens, this is not a problem I often experience. There are (regrettably) few scholars working in my field - which means you can spot their work a mile off. Even the most conniving undergraduate or graduate student cannot get away with nicking someone else's work on medieval Greek literature or the archaeology of the Russian steppes.

But what makes the resignations of all these European politicians really depressing (you can find a rogue's gallery of them here) is how dull the their dissertations were in the first place, how boring the topics, how mundane the work they claimed as their own. If they had run in and pinched exciting and ground-breaking material about really exciting topics, then at least one might just about understand it - after all, claiming credit for other people's ideas is par for the course for the modern politician. As, of course, is risk-taking: high-stakes for high-office.

But I suppose that is the point: so dull and uninspired are the politicians of today that they don't even have the brains to take something good. I know very little about the mindset of the thief; but I've seen enough movies (Ocean's 11 anyone?) to know that if you're going to do it, you might as well think big. How depressing to find out that so many of the current generation of political leaders are little more than second-rate pickpockets. Then again, perhaps to go for the big heist, it helps if you look like George Clooney ?

Yesterday, Pope Benedict XVI announced his retirement. He did so in front of an audience that had gathered for an important, if routine, meeting concerning three canonizations.

Those present, including many senior cardinals were stunned into silence. Nobody expected it; but nobody ever does.

In the 24 hours since, commentators have been scurrying to the history books to stress how unexpected and unusual the retirement. That has been good news for Pope Gregory XII, who stood down in 1415 - previously ignored by all but die-hard obsessives about medieval church schisms - but who suddenly finds his name front page news alongside his apostolic successor almost exactly 600 years since he disappeared off into peaceful seclusion in Ancona.

The question on everyone's lips is what is the precedent this sets for future popes. But as those who look not at Old but at New Rome, the imperial city of Constantinople, the question would be rather different. Heads of what became known as the Orthodox church often retired, and the seasoned viewer knows that they never really chose to spend their old age in 'monastic perfection' (as one optimistic Byzantine chronicler puts it) - and as Pope Benedict himself is not set to do. It was a case of jump or be pushed.

There are - and always have been - passionate struggles behind ecclesiastical thrones, and not surprisingly so: interpreting God's will is a serious business and an enormous amount hangs on getting it right. When millions follow you, the stakes and the pressure are almost impossibly high. When there is noise amongst your senior hierarchy, however, it is not just exhaustion and old age that bite, but a crisis of confidence.

In the Pope's case, there can be no question that physical frailty has played a part in magnifying concerns that must already have been overwhelming. But the real question is what was the issue (or issues?) that ground Pope Benedict down and where he was able to admit, in an act of profound humility, that he was not able to provide clarity of leadership?

Was he, as a highly intelligent scholar, simply unable to decide between two competing views; or was there hostility to his conclusions from some of those cardinals who sat in silence as the Pope announced his news. Perhaps the comment that his decision was one that had 'great importance for the life of the church' is to be understood best as a pointer at those who had not stood alongside him when he most needed their support.

As was always the case in Constantinople, the choice of successor will reveal what was really going on behind the scenes;

Never, growing up in the 1970s, did I imagine that Lego would find itself in trouble, or that its designers would end up being accused of blasphemy; it was hard to think of ways those little bricks that could be offensive.

But this week there has been an almighty hoo-ha because some bright (?) spark has finally realised that the creators of Star Wars borrowed heavily on the city of Istanbul/Constantinople for inspiration for the disappointingly sub-standard trilogy of prequels that were based on Anakin Skywalker's turn to the dark side.

Having obviously missed the films when they came out a decade or so ago (or they'd have noticed then), it came to the attention of a Turkish group in Austria that Lego had made a model of 'Jabba's palace' that looked just like the Haghia Sophia. This was both racist and disrepectful to Islam, they said in a statement that duly went round every news room of every newspaper in the world and into the next day's pages.

I could not help feel sorry for poor Lego who were only following what they saw on the film screen and on the mood boards by the movie big-wigs.

But if anyone was being disrespectful, it was those Austrian killjoys for turning on the humble brick maker rather than the behemoth Star Wars franchise that plundered its inspiration straight from the streets of the capital of the Byzantine Empire (Skyfall tried too, by the way, with zero success - but that's another story...)

As for the idea that using the Haghia Sophia 'mosque' was anti-Islamic and racist - well, the accusers should be ashamed of themselves. Although 'Jabba's palace' was a converted into a mosque after the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453, it had been the jewel in the crown of Christendom for more than a thousand years beforehand, one of the most famous and important churches in the Christian world. Those minarets are are of course not original. And in any event they do not appear on Lego model anyway - the tower on the model is not a minaret, but more likely a small brick version of the milion, the post from which all distances in the Byzantine empire were measured.

History lives and breathes and changes depending who is writing it. There is nothing new about expropriating it either. Nevertheless, it was a surreal week when Byzantium, the Ottoman Turks, Islamic agitators, Lego and Star Wars were all mixed up together in a single pot. It felt like being in another film, The Matrix: my childhood and my academic career blending together in a way I'd never expected. That doesn't often happen - unless, of course none of it is real...

I'm working on Persia and Iran at the moment, the engine room of global trade, religion and science. It's where ideas and goods have been exchanged for millennia and today is no exception.

I am fascinated and amused when societies over-promote people, and this guy seems a perfect case study (unless the mullahs know something I don't - which is quite possible).

This week, though, I am particularly tickled because the President of Iran - who is quite powerful (has quite a good arsenal of weapons; never wears a tie; not good with kids) - has said he would not only like to be the first Iranian in space, but he would be prepared to be 'sacrificed by scientists' if it made his dream came true.

Not sure about you, but my science teachers never gave me the option of being ritually sacrificed. But if they had, I'd have been obsessed about whether on re-entry, I would have burnt with a squeaky pop; would have turned lime-water milky; or would have re-lit a glowing splint.

Maybe we'll find out if President Ahmedinejad literally goes ballistic...