Mr Darcy, the romantic hero of Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice , has been portrayed by a string of showbusiness heart-throbs, but a new study suggests he would probably have looked very different from the modern ideal of masculinity. Austen is likely to have had in a mind a man with sloping shoulders, white powdered hair, a pale complexion, thin oval face and a small mouth, according to academics who were asked to advise on the most historically accurate look of Mr Darcy, to mark a television series celebrating the writer’s work.