Take a turn in Jane Austen country

To mark the 200th anniversary of the much loved author’s death, Nigel Richardson visits her Hampshire home – and meets a celebrated direct descendant

It’s her writing table that really sets the pulses racing apparently – the 12-sided walnut surface (scarcely big enough for an iPad and a latte) on which Jane Austen wrote Emma, Persuasion and Mansfield Park. And revised and brought to perfection Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey. This is the inanimate object that visitors to Jane Austen’s House Museum, in the Hampshire village of Chawton, make a beeline for – its former physical proximity, both to the great author and to the raw form of her immortal work, having imbued it with quasi-religious significance for Jane’s legions of followers around the world. But there is an animate object that for some commands almost as much reverence. This is Jeremy Knight, volunteer guide and descendant of the sainted Jane.

I ran into Jeremy in the drawing room where he was standing next to the bookcase and desk that once belonged to his ancestor, the Rev George Austen, Jane Austen’s father. “Edward (Jane’s brother, Edward Austen Knight) was my great-greatgreat-grandfather,” he confirmed. This makes him (I think) Jane’s great-great-greatgreat nephew – no wonder he checked the back of his name badge, where he has jotted down the lineage (“I do actually know it but I get muddled,” he said). As we talked, a woman spotted the badge and approached with a mixture of diffidence and excitement: “I just wanted to ask – are you related to the Knight family?” And Jeremy proceeded to make her day. Knight will be making many people’s days this summer. For July 18 marks the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s death, at the age of 41, in 1817 and this significant milestone has provided a golden focus for a glut of Jane-related books, events and exhibitions. The long-dead novelist – whose scope, in her own words, was confined to “three or four families in a country village” – is the gift that keeps on giving so far as publishing and tourism are concerned. And Hampshire in particular – where she was born,

The author’s writing desk, above; Chawton House Library, right; a 19th century portrait, inset right; and a pair of shoes at ‘The Mysterious Jane Austen’ exhibition, below