IMMIGRANTS who want to become British citizens will have to take a pledge of loyalty to the UK and observe the national anthem under proposals published by Government ministers.

Pilots of the new American-style citizenship ceremonies will begin early next year and are expected to be up and running in April.

The thousands of people who become naturalised Britons each year will be guided through the ceremony by a registrar. Dignitaries such as the local mayor, MP or provost will be invited to make a speech and present citizenship certificates.

It is also envisaged that applicants will have sufficient knowledge of English, Welsh or Gaelic and pass a "Britishness test" on practical aspects of life in the UK and its institutions.

Not before time, too. As far as I am concerned, it has for long been a source of amazement that such conditions have not been imposed earlier.

For it is surely not unreasonable that all new citizens should automatically become indebted to the new country that has just provided them with shelter, work opportunities, health and welfare benefits.

Many countries have for years made it a pre-condition of acceptance. America - the land that gave succour to the teeming masses of 19th Century Europe - has always demanded that newcomers make a pledge of commitment, forsaking all other loyalties.

Flawed though its democracy may be, few would deny that America - a pot pourri of the world's races - has, within living memory, put ethnic loyalties to one side in the name of global freedom.

Of course, we are talking history here. And speaking of which, I think it should be compulsory for every would-be immigrant to study Britain's eventful past.

However, I am becoming fearful for what I would term the "Hollywood-isation" of history. Let me tell you about a recent night out at the cinema...

Now, this was a soiree of celluloid enjoyment that seemed right up my street. It was my daughter Alice's idea, really. She'd noticed that To Kill A King was showing at Malvern and expressed an interest.

So off we went. Yes, it was a passable period piece... except that it played fast and loose with the facts. Sadly, the film was only redeemed by its overall ambience, well-crafted acting and evocative camera work.

But as an historical document it was a travesty. Purporting to be about the relationship between Oliver Cromwell and Thomas Fairfax, his most skilled general in the first civil war, the script at times degenerated into a kind of 17th Century buddy movie.

None of this would have been too bad. But there were several utterly surreal scenes that had more in common with a Clint Eastwood movie than a swashbuckling piece of pastoral pre-industrial England.

For example, the opening sequence in which Fairfax shoots a dagger out of the hand of a would-be assassin is more west of the Pecos than east of Ipswich.

More gunplay follows, including a truly idiotic shot (sorry!) in which Ollie fills a former soldier - probably a Leveller - with enough lead to cover a church roof.

Then there is the attempt on Cromwell's life, Fairfax's collusion, treachery... and so on. But it's fantasy. It never happened.

The point I'm making is this. What would someone who had never read a book on British history - for example, an immigrant - make of it all? Viewing such a film, he'd accept it as fact, of course. Herein lies the danger of "Hollywood-isation" .

Cromwell may have been a dictator. But his portrayal as a homicidal lunatic with bodies on gibbets lining the path to his house is an appalling, if laughable distortion of the truth.

To the uninitiated, it would appear that a wart-encrusted Hitler character in a brown leather jerkin ruled England in the years 1645-60. Complete tripe.

However, we should not be surprised at such distortions. The shadow of the Second World War seems to hang like a shadow over today's film producers.

Take another film that did the rounds a few years ago, once again assuming the mantle of historical veracity.

Mel Gibson lost little time in following up his success with Braveheart. In case you had forgotten, this epic about Scottish hero William Wallace proved to be one of the great moneyspinners of the 1990s.

Yet it was bunkum from beginning to end. The film portrayed Wallace as a mixture of Robin Hood, Ivanhoe, Pale Rider and Mother Theresa... a superman covered in woad and clutching a claymore that moved faster than the blurred blades in a turbo-charged food blender.

But Wallace was really just a psychopathic border bandit, capable of acts that were equally as brutal as those committed by the hated English.

And the film was a soarway success. For it's politically correct to loathe the English. People lapped it up - which was probably why The Patriot came close on its heels.

This truly absurd foray into 18th Century revolutionary America asked us to believe that the war between the 13 rebel states and Great Britain was a straight-down-the-line conflict between noble freedom fighters and a despotic, genocidal superstate.

But the scene in which the British burn villagers alive in a church was a grotesque parody of the truth. Interestingly though, the film had a German producer.

And of course, it was the German Army in the Second World that had done exactly this at Lidice and Oradour-sur-Glane in occupied Europe...

Nevertheless, a newcomer to this country - an asylum seeker, say - would see this film and take it as being a true representation of the facts. Once again, an example of the crude lies being perpetrated by "Hollywood-isation".

But I suppose the cinematic depiction of the Americans' "capture" of the Enigma code machine during the Second World War is the most recent and completely bizarre corruption of the actual events.

U-571 really was shades of Objective Burma! And here we were, thinking that the ludicrous gung-ho era of Errol Flynn and John Wayne had long been consigned to the pile of trimmed film in the editor's waste bin.

Yup. The Yanks didn't just fight and win every battle. They made a prisoner of the truth, too. The problem is this.

The relentless distortion of British culture continues unabated because the only source of information for many people is now the television or cinema screen.

Already, history graduates are increasingly gleaning their information by electronic means. If they can do it without blushing, what chance can there be for the less-academically inclined?

The building block of every nation is its history. By studying what went on before, we can understand the present. This is important for the indigenous population, and even more vital for the new citizen.

For how are such people ever supposed to assimilate and become useful members of British society if they are prevented from learning about our great institutions, traditions and the greatest achievement of all - the gift of Parliamentary democracy to the world?

The answer is that they can't if the American movie industry is their only tutor.

And that is why "Hollywood-isation" will remain an invidious threat to the proud story of this country's thousand years of change and development from isolated island to - in the main - global defender of all that is good and true.