SOLICITOR Chris Oswald is used to donning a wig and gown as parts of his job representing people in the Crown Court.

But by night he goes even further and becomes a Regency dressmaker.

He and wife Chris have turned their Marlborough home into a shrine to Jane Austen and next week they are appearing in a BBC documentary about the fans who are keeping the novelists’s legacy alive by dressing in period clothes, playing music from the time and dancing at balls.

My Friend Jane features a group of Janeites, ardent followers who regularly escape the 21st Century to step back into the 1800s.

Chris and Ros have filled their home with all things Austen. Musician Ros has an 18th-century spinet which she uses to play Regency music.

“She would probably think we were a bit sad really. I mean if you read some of the things she says in her novels they are very cutting,” she said.

Her husband added: “I should imagine she would make comments such as: ‘I do wonder what is missing from people's lives that they should hark back to old days rather than modern ones.’”

Also on the show are Zac, a 22-year-old self-taught period tailor from Hove, who loves dressing in his meticulously handcrafted Regency clothes and doesn’t own a pair of jeans, Sophie, 21, from Reading, who read Pride and Prejudice as school and found it helped her cope with bullies, Claudine from New York and Jane Austen fan fiction writer Joana from Reading.

They all meet at a Regency ball put on by Sophie.

My Friend Jane is on BBC One South at 7pm on July 17.