What did Jane Austen and Bill Clinton have in common?

The recent scorching weather in London has brought out some repellent pairs of trousers, particularly those baggy half-length affairs, worn by stocky, thick-calved, T-shirted young men, with shaven heads and beer bellies, who now appear to epitomise English youth. Trousers are useful, indeed indispensable garments, but sartorially the only solution to the trouser problem is to make them as inconspicuous as possible.