Kelly Clarkson has been banned from taking a $244,000 ring out of Britain. The singer successfully bid for the ring - which was once owned by revered romantic novelist Jane Austen - at a U.K. auction, but she is not allowed to take the ring back to the States when her British tour comes to an end this weekend because it has been declared a national treasure. Kelly - who also won a first edition of the writer's 1816 novel
Persuasion - said: "I got up at 4 a.m. to start bidding on the auction. We put in an export request but I can't take it out of the U.K. as they've named it a national treasure." The 30-year-old singer is a self-confessed "history nerd" and during her latest U.K. tour she swapped her tour bus for a personal driver in order to see a number of historical sites around the country, including the place where the 2005 big screen adaptation of Austen's
Pride & Prejudice novel was shot. She added to the
Daily Star newspaper: "I had my sister with me and we went to Derbyshire to see where the version of
Pride & Prejudice featuring Keira Knightley was filmed. Y'all live in such a beautiful place. When I'm here there's so much to see as I'm a really big history nerd. All I've done for the past decade is see the tour bus so we thought we'd do something different."